THE  FINER 


ENR7  JAMES 


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THE  FINER  GRAIN 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 


BY 

HENRY   JAMES 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S  SONS 
1910 


COPYRIGHT,  1910,  BY 
CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

Published  October,  1910 


Fs 


CONTENTS 

THE  VELVET  GLOVE i 

MORA  MONTRAVERS 47 

A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 139 

CRAPY  CORNELIA 187 

THE  BENCH  or  DESOLATION 235 


M679552 


THE   VELVET    GLOVE 


4  THE   VELVET   GLOVE" 
I 

T  TE  thought  he  had  already,  poor  John  Berridge, 
'•*•-*•  tasted  in  their  fulness  the  sweets  of  success; 
but  nothing  yet  had  been  more  charming  to  him  than 
when  the  young  Lord,  as  he  irresistibly  and,  for  greater 
certitude,  quite  correctly  figured  him,  fairly  sought  out, 
in  Paris,  the  new  literary  star  that  had  begun  to  hang, 
with  a  fresh  red  light,  over  the  vast,  even  though  rather 
confused,  Anglo-Saxon  horizon;  positively  approach 
ing  that  celebrity  with  a  shy  and  artless  appeal.  The 
young  Lord  invoked  on  this  occasion  the  celebrity's 
prized  judgment  of  a  special  literary  case;  and  Ber 
ridge  could  take  the  whole  manner  of  it  for  one  of  the 
"quaintest"  little  acts  displayed  to  his  amused  eyes,  up 
to  now,  on  the  stage  of  European  society — albeit  these 
eyes  were  quite  aware,  in  general,  of  missing  everywhere 
no  more  of  the  human  scene  than  possible,  and  of  hav 
ing  of  late  been  particularly  awake  to  the  large  exten 
sions  of  it  spread  before  him  (since  so  he  could  but 
fondly  read  his  fate)  under  the  omen  of  his  prodigious 
"hit."  It  was  because  of  his  hit  that  he  was  having 
rare  opportunities — of  which  he  was  so  honestly  and 

3 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

humbly  proposing,  as  he  would  have  said,  to  make  the 
most:  it  was  because  every  one  in  the  world  (so  far  had 
the  thing  gone)  was  reading  "The  Heart  of  Gold"  as 
just  a  slightly  too  fat  volume,  or  sitting  out  the  same  as 
just  a  fifth-act  too  long  play,  that  he  found  himself 
floated  on  a  tide  he  would  scarce  have  dared  to  show 
his  favourite  hero  sustained  by,  found  a  hundred 
agreeable  and  interesting  things  happen  to  him  which 
were  all,  one  way  or  another,  affluents  of  the  golden 
stream. 

The  great  renewed  resonance — renewed  by  the  in 
credible  luck  of  the  play — was  always  in  his  ears  with 
out  so  much  as  a  conscious  turn  of  his  head  to  listen; 
so  that  the  queer  world  of  his  fame  was  not  the  mere 
usual  field  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  boom,  but  positively 
the  bottom  of  the  w hole  theatric  sea,  unplumbed  source 
of  the  wave  that  had  borne  him  in  the  course  of  a  year 
or  two  over  German,  French,  Italian,  Russian,  Scandi 
navian  foot-lights.  Paris  itself  really  appeared  for  the 
hour  the  centre  of  his  cyclone,  with  reports  and  "re 
turns,"  to  say  nothing  of  agents  and  emissaries,  con 
verging  from  the  minor  capitals;  though  his  impatience 
was  scarce  the  less  keen  to  get  back  to  London,  where 
his  work  had  had  no  such  critical  excoriation  to  sur 
vive,  no  such  lesson  of  anguish  to  learn,  as  it  had  re 
ceived  at  the  hand  of  supreme  authority,  of  that  French 
authority  which  was  in  such  a  matter  the  only  one  to 
be  artistically  reckoned  with.  If  his  spirit  indeed  had 
had  to  reckon  with  it  his  fourth  act  practically  hadn't: 

4 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

it  continued  to  make  him  blush  every  night  for  the 
public  more  even  than  the  inimitable  feuilleton  had 
made  him  blush  for  himself. 

This  had  figured,  however,  after  all,  the  one  bad 
drop  in  his  cup;  so  that,  for  the  rest,  his  high-water 
mark  might  well  have  been,  that  evening  at  Gloriani's 
studio,  the  approach  of  his  odd  and  charming  applicant, 
vaguely  introduced  at  the  latter' s  very  own  request  by 
their  hostess,  who,  with  an  honest,  helpless,  genial 
gesture,  washed  her  fat  begemmed  hands  of  the  name 
and  identity  of  either,  but  left  the  fresh,  fair,  ever  so 
habitually  assured,  yet  ever  so  easily  awkward  English 
man  with  his  plea  to  put  forth.  There  was  that  in 
this  pleasant  personage  which  could  still  make  Berridge 
wonder  what  conception  of  profit  from  him  might  have, 
all  incalculably,  taken  form  in  such  a  head — these 
being  truly  the  last  intrenchments  of  our  hero's  modesty. 
He  wondered,  the  splendid  young  man,  he  wondered 
awfully,  he  wondered  (it  was  unmistakable)  quite  ner 
vously,  he  wondered,  to  John's  ardent  and  acute  imagi 
nation,  quite  beautifully,  if  the  author  of  "The  Heart 
of  Gold"  would  mind  just  looking  at  a  book  by  a  friend 
of  his,  a  great  friend,  which  he  himself  believed  rather 
clever,  and  had  in  fact  found  very  charming,  but  as 
to  which — if  it  really  wouldn't  bore  Mr.  Berridge — he 
should  so  like  the  verdict  of  some  one  who  knew. 
His  friend  was  awfully  ambitious,  and  he  thought  there 
was  something  in  it — with  all  of  which  might  he  send 
the  book  to  any  address? 

5 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

Berridge  thought  of  many  things  while  the  young 
Lord  thus  charged  upon  him,  and  it  was  odd  that  no 
one  of  them  was  any  question  of  the  possible  worth  of 
the  offered  achievement — which,  for  that  matter,  was 
certain  to  be  of  the  quality  of  all  the  books,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  plays,  and  the  projects  for  plays,  with 
which,  for  some  time  past,  he  had  seen  his  daily  post- 
bag  distended.  He  had  made  out,  on  looking  at  these 
things,  no  difference  at  all  from  one  to  the  other. 
Here,  however,  was  something  more — something  that 
made  his  fellow-guest's  overture  independently  inter 
esting  and,  as  he  might  imagine,  important.  He 
smiled,  he  was  friendly  and  vague;  said  "A  work  of 
fiction,  I  suppose?"  and  that  he  didn't  pretend  ever 
to  pronounce,  that  he  in  fact  quite  hated,  always,  to 
have  to,  not  "knowing,"  as  he  felt,  any  better  than  any 
one  else;  but  would  gladly  look  at  anything,  under 
that  demur,  if  it  would  give  any  pleasure.  Perhaps 
the  very  brightest  and  most  diamond-like  twinkle  he 
had  yet  seen  the  star  of  his  renown  emit  was  just  the 
light  brought  into  his  young  Lord's  eyes  by  this  so  easy 
consent  to  oblige.  It  was  easy  because  the  presence 
before  him  was  from  moment  to  moment  referring 
itself  back  to  some  recent  observation  or  memory; 
something  caught  somewhere,  within  a  few  weeks  or 
months,  as  he  had  moved  about,  and  that  seemed 
to  flutter  forth  at  this  stir  of  the  folded  leaves  of 
his  recent  experience  very  much  as  a  gathered, 
faded  flower,  placed  there  for  "pressing,"  might 

6 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

drop  from  between  the  pages  of  a  volume  opened  at 
hazard. 

He  had  seen  him  before,  this  splendid  and  sympa 
thetic  person — whose  flattering  appeal  was  by  no  means 
all  that  made  him  sympathetic;  he  had  met  him,  had 
noted,  had  wondered  about  him,  had  in  fact  imagina 
tively,  intellectually,  so  to  speak,  quite  yearned  over 
him,  in  some  conjunction  lately,  though  ever  so  fleet- 
ingly,  apprehended:  which  circumstance  constituted 
precisely  an  association  as  tormenting,  for  the  few 
minutes,  as  it  was  vague,  and  set  him  to  sounding, 
intensely  and  vainly,  the  face  that  itself  figured  every 
thing  agreeable  except  recognition.  He  couldn't  re 
member,  and  the  young  man  didn't;  distinctly,  yes, 
they  had  been  in  presence,  during  the  previous  winter, 
by  some  chance  of  travel,  through  Sicily,  through 
Italy,  through  the  south  of  France,  but  his  Seigneurie 
— so  Berridge  liked  exotically  to  phrase  it — had  then 
(in  ignorance  of  the  present  reasons)  not  noticed  him. 
It  was  positive  for  the  man  of  established  identity,  all 
the  while  too,  and  through  the  perfect  lucidity  of  his 
sense  of  achievement  in  an  air  "conducting"  nothing 
but  the  loudest  bang,  that  this  was  fundamentally  much 
less  remarkable  than  the  fact  of  his  being  made  up  to 
in  such  a  quarter  now.  That  was  the  disservice,  in  a 
manner,  of  one's  having  so  much  imagination:  the 
mysterious  values  of  other  types  kept  looming  larger 
before  you  than  the  doubtless  often  higher  but  com 
paratively  familiar  ones  of  your  own,  and  if  you  had 

7 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

anything  of  the  artist's  real  feeling  for  life  the  attrac 
tion  and  amusement  of  possibilities  so  projected  were 
worth  more  to  you,  in  nineteen  moods  out  of  twenty, 
than  the  sufficiency,  the  serenity,  the  felicity,  whatever 
it  might  be,  of  your  stale  personal  certitudes.  You 
were  intellectually,  you  were  "  artistically "  rather  ab 
ject,  in  fine,  if  your  curiosity  (in  the  grand  sense  of  the 
term)  wasn't  worth  more  to  you  than  your  dignity. 
What  was  your  dignity,  "  anyway,"  but  just  the  con 
sistency  of  your  curiosity,  and  what  moments  were 
ever  so  ignoble  for  you  as,  under  the  blighting  breath 
of  the  false  gods,  stupid  conventions,  traditions,  exam 
ples,  your  lapses  from  that  consistency?  His  Seign- 
eurie,  at  all  events,  delightfully,  hadn't  the  least  real 
idea  of  what  any  John  Berridge  was  talking  about,  and 
the  latter  felt  that  if  he  had  been  less  beautifully  wit 
less,  and  thereby  less  true  to  his  right  figure,  it  might 
scarce  have  been  forgiven  him. 

His  right  figure  was  that  of  life  in  irreflective  joy 
and  at  the  highest  thinkable  level  of  prepared  security 
and  unconscious  insolence.  What  was  the  pale  page 
of  fiction  compared  with  the  intimately  personal  ad 
venture  that,  in  almost  any  direction,  he  would  have 
been  all  so  stupidly,  all  so  gallantly,  all  so  instinctively 
and,  by  every  presumption,  so  prevailingly  ready  for? 
Berridge  would  have  given  six  months'  "royalties"  for 
even  an  hour  of  his  looser  dormant  consciousness — 
since  one  was  oneself,  after  all,  no  worm,  but  an  heir 
of  all  the  ages  too — and  yet  without  being  able  to  sup- 

3 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

ply  chapter  and  verse  for  the  felt,  the  huge  difference. 
His  Seigneurie  was  tall  and  straight,  but  so,  thank 
goodness,  was  the  author  of  "The  Heart  of  Gold,"  who 
had  no  such  vulgar  "mug"  either;  and  there  was  no 
intrinsic  inferiority  in  being  a  bit  inordinately,  and  so 
it  might  have  seemed  a  bit  strikingly,  black-browed 
instead  of  being  fair  as  the  morning.  Again  while  his 
new  friend  delivered  himself  our  own  tried  in  vain  to 
place  him;  he  indulged  in  plenty  of  pleasant,  if  rather 
restlessly  headlong  sound,  the  confessed  incoherence 
of  a  happy  mortal  who  had  always  many  things  "on," 
and  who,  while  waiting  at  any  moment  for  connections 
and  consummations,  had  fallen  into  the  way  of  talking, 
as  they  said,  all  artlessly,  and  a  trifle  more  betrayingly, 
against  time.  He  would  always  be  having  appoint 
ments,  and  somehow  of  a  high  "romantic"  order, 
to  keep,  and  the  imperfect  punctualities  of  others  to 
wait  for — though  who  would  be  of  a  quality  to  make 
such  a  pampered  personage  wait  very  much  our  young 
analyst  could  only  enjoy  asking  himself.  There  were 
women  who  might  be  of  a  quality — half  a  dozen  of 
those  perhaps,  of  those  alone,  about  the  world;  our 
friend  was  as  sure  of  this,  by  the  end  of  four  minutes, 
as  if  he  knew  all  about  it. 

After  saying  he  would  send  him  the  book  the  young 
Lord  indeed  dropped  that  subject;  he  had  asked  where 
he  might  send  it,  and  had  had  an  "  Oh,  I  shall  remem 
ber!"  on  John's  mention  of  an  hotel;  but  he  had  made 
no  further  dash  into  literature,  and  it  was  ten  to  one 

9 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

that  this  would  be  the  last  the  distinguished  author 
might  hear  of  the  volume.  Such  again  was  a  note  of 
these  high  existences — that  made  one  content  to  ask 
of  them  no  whit  of  other  consistency  than  that  of  car 
rying  off  the  particular  occasion,  whatever  it  might 
be,  in  a  dazzle  of  amiability  and  felicity  and  leaving 
that  as  a  sufficient  trace  of  their  passage.  Sought  and 
achieved  consistency  was  but  an  angular,  a  secondary 
motion;  compared  with  the  air  of  complete  freedom  it 
might  have  an  effect  of  deformity.  There  was  no 
placing  this  figure  of  radiant  ease,  for  Berridge,  in  any 
relation  that  didn't  appear  not  good  enough — that  is 
among  the  relations  that  hadn't  been  too  good  for 
Berridge  himself.  He  was  all  right  where  he  was; 
the  great  Gloriani  somehow  made  that  law;  his  house, 
with  his  supreme  artistic  position,  was  good  enough 
for  any  one,  and  to-night  in  especial  there  were  charm 
ing  people,  more  charming  than  our  friend  could  recall 
from  any  other  scene,  as  the  natural  train  or  circle,  as 
he  might  say,  of  such  a  presence.  For  an  instant  he 
thought  he  had  got  the  face  as  a  specimen  of  imper 
turbability  watched,  with  wonder,  across  the  hushed 
rattle  of  roulette  at  Monte-Carlo;  but  this  quickly 
became  as  improbable  as  any  question  of  a  vulgar 
table  d'hote,  or  a  steam-boat  deck,  or  a  herd  of  fellow- 
pilgrims  cicerone-led,  or  even  an  opera-box  serving, 
during  a  performance,  for  frame  of  a  type  observed 
from  the  stalls.  One  placed  young  gods  and  goddesses 
only  when  one  placed  them  on  Olympus,  and  it  met 

10 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

the  case,  always,  that  they  were  of  Olympian  race,  and 
that  they  glimmered  for  one,  at  the  best,  through  their 
silver  cloud,  like  the  visiting  apparitions  in  an  epic. 

This  was  brief  and  beautiful  indeed  till  something 
happened  that  gave  it,  for  Berridge,  on  the  spot,  a 
prodigious  extension — an  extension  really  as  prodigi 
ous,  after  a  little,  as  if  he  had  suddenly  seen  the  silver 
clouds  multiply  and  then  the  whole  of  Olympus  pres 
ently  open.  Music,  breaking  upon  the  large  air,  en 
joined  immediate  attention,  and  in  a  moment  he  was 
listening,  with  the  rest  of  the  company,  to  an  eminent 
tenor,  who  stood  by  the  piano;  and  was  aware,  with  it, 
that  his  Englishman  had  turned  away  and  that  in  the 
vast,  rich,  tapestried  room  where,  in  spite  of  figures 
and  objects  so  numerous,  clear  spaces,  wide  vistas,  and, 
as  they  might  be  called,  becoming  situations  abounded, 
there  had  been  from  elsewhere,  at  the  signal  of  unmis 
takable  song,  a  rapid  accession  of  guests.  At  first  he 
but  took  this  in,  and  the  way  that  several  young  women, 
for  whom  seats  had  been  found,  looked  charming  in 
the  rapt  attitude;  while  even  the  men,  mostly  standing 
and  grouped,  "  composed,"  in  their  stillness,  scarce 
less  impressively,  under  the  sway  of  the  divine  voice. 
It  ruled  the  scene,  to  the  last  intensity,  and  yet  our 
young  man's  fine  sense  found  still  a  resource  in  the 
range  of  the  eyes,  without  sound  or  motion,  while  all 
the  rest  of  consciousness  was  held  down  as  by  a  hand 
mailed  in  silver.  It  was  better,  in  this  way,  than  the 
opera — John  alertly  thought  of  that:  the  composition 

ii 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

sung  might  be  Wagnerian,  but  no  Tristram,  no  Iseult, 
no  Parsifal  and,  no  Kundry  of  them  all  could  ever 
show,  could  ever  "act"  to  the  music,  as  our  friend 
had  thus  the  power  of  seeing  his  dear  contemporaries 
of  either  sex  (armoured  they  so  otherwise  than  in 
cheap  Teutonic  tinsel !)  just  continuously  and  inscruta 
bly  sit  to  it. 

It  made,  the  whole  thing  together,  an  enchantment 
amid  which  he  had  in  truth,  at  a  given  moment,  ceased 
to  distinguish  parts — so  that  he  was  himself  certainly 
at  last  soaring  as  high  as  the  singer's  voice  and  forget 
ting,  in  a  lost  gaze  at  the  splendid  ceiling,  everything 
of  the  occasion  but  what  his  intelligence  poured  into  it. 
This,  as  happened,  was  a  flight  so  sublime  that  by  the 
time  he  had  dropped  his  eyes  again  a  cluster  of  persons 
near  the  main  door  had  just  parted  to  give  way  to  a 
belated  lady  who  slipped  in,  through  the  gap  made  for 
her,  and  stood  for  some  minutes  full  in  his  view.  It 
was  a  proof  of  the  perfect  hush  that  no  one  stirred  to 
offer  her  a  seat,  and  her  entrance,  in  her  high  grace, 
had  yet  been  so  noiseless  that  she  could  remain  at  once 
immensely  exposed  and  completely  unabashed.  For 
Berridge,  once  more,  if  the  scenic  show  before  him  so 
melted  into  the  music,  here  precisely  might  have  been 
the  heroine  herself  advancing  to  the  foot-lights  at  her 
cue.  The  interest  deepened  to  a  thrill,  and  everything, 
at  the  touch  of  his  recognition  of  this  personage,  abso 
lutely  the  most  beautiful  woman  now  present,  fell  ex 
quisitely  together  and  gave  him  what  he  had  been 

12 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

wanting  from  the  moment  of  his  taking  in  his  young 
Englishman. 

It  was  there,  the  missing  connection:  her  arrival 
had  on  the  instant  lighted  it  by  a  flash.  Olympian 
herself,  supremely,  divinely  Olympian,  she  had  arrived, 
could  only  have  arrived,  for  the  one  person  present  of 
really  equal  race,  our  young  man's  late  converser, 
whose  flattering  demonstration  might  now  stand  for 
one  of  the  odd  extravagant  forms  taken  by  nervous 
impatience.  This  charming,  this  dazzling  woman  had 
been  one  member  of  the  couple  disturbed,  to  his  inti 
mate  conviction,  the  autumn  previous,  on  his  being 
pushed  by  the  officials,  at  the  last  moment,  into  a  com 
partment  of  the  train  that  was  to  take  him  from  Cre 
mona  to  Mantua — where,  failing  a  stop,  he  had  had  to 
keep  his  place.  The  other  member,  by  whose  felt  but 
unseized  identity  he  had  been  haunted,  was  the  uncon 
sciously  insolent  form  of  guaranteed  happiness  he  had 
just  been  engaged  with.  The  sense  of  the  admirable 
intimacy  that,  having  taken  its  precautions,  had  not 
reckoned  with  his  irruption — this  image  had  remained 
with  him;  to  say  nothing  of  the  interest  of  aspect  of 
the  associated  figures,  so  stamped  somehow  with  rarity, 
so  beautifully  distinct  from  the  common  occupants  of 
padded  corners,  and  yet  on  the  subject  of  whom,  for 
the  romantic  structure  he  was  immediately  to  raise,  he 
had  not  had  a  scrap  of  evidence. 

If  he  had  imputed  to  them  conditions  it  was  all  his 
own  doing:  it  came  from  his  inveterate  habit  of  abysmal 

13 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

imputation,  the  snatching  of  the  ell  wherever  the  inch 
peeped  out,  without  which  where  would  have  been  the 
tolerability  of  life?  It  didn't  matter  now  what  he  had 
imputed — and  he  always  held  that  his  expenses  of  im 
putation  were,  at  the  worst,  a  compliment  to  those 
inspiring  them.  It  only  mattered  that  each  of  the  pair 
had  been  then  what  he  really  saw  each  now — full,  that 
is,  of  the  pride  of  their  youth  and  beauty  and  fortune 
and  freedom,  though  at  the  same  time  particularly 
preoccupied:  preoccupied,  that  is,  with  the  affairs,  and 
above  all  with  the  passions,  of  Olympus.  Who  had 
they  been,  and  what  ?  Whence  had  they  come,  whither 
were  they  bound,  what  tie  united  them,  what  adventure 
engaged,  what  felicity,  tempered  by  what  peril,  mag 
nificently,  dramatically  attended  ?  These  had  been  his 
questions,  all  so  inevitable  and  so  impertinent,  at  the 
time,  and  to  the  exclusion  of  any  scruples  over  his  not 
postulating  an  inane  honeymoon,  his  not  taking  the 
"tie,"  as  he  should  doubtless  properly  have  done,  for 
the  mere  blest  matrimonial;  and  he  now  retracted  not 
one  of  them,  flushing  as  they  did  before  him  again 
with  their  old  momentary  life.  To  feel  his  two  friends 
renewedly  in  presence — friends  of  the  fleeting  hour 
though  they  had  but  been,  and  with  whom  he  had 
exchanged  no  sign  save  the  vaguest  of  salutes  on  finally 
relieving  them  of  his  company — was  only  to  be  conscious 
that  he  hadn't,  on  the  spot,  done  them,  so  to  speak, 
half  justice,  and  that,  for  his  superior  entertainment, 
there  would  be  ever  so  much  more  of  them  to  come. 

14 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

II 

IT  might  already  have  been  coming  indeed,  with 
an  immense  stride,  when,  scarce  more  than  ten  minutes 
later,  he  was  aware  that  the  distinguished  stranger 
had  brought  the  Princess  straight  across  the  room  to 
speak  to  him.  He  had  failed  in  the  interval  of  any 
glimpse  of  their  closer  meeting;  for  the  great  tenor 
had  sung  another  song  and  then  stopped,  immedi 
ately  on  which  Madame  Gloriani  had  made  his  pulse 
quicken  to  a  different,  if  not  to  a  finer,  throb  by 
hovering  before  him  once  more  with  the  man  in  the 
world  he  most  admired,  as  it  were,  looking  at  him  over 
her  shoulder.  The  man  in  the  world  he  most  admired, 
the  greatest  then  of  contemporary  Dramatists — and 
bearing,  independently,  the  name  inscribed  if  not  in 
deepest  incision  at  least  in  thickest  gilding  on  the  rich 
recreative  roll — this  prodigious  personage  was  actually 
to  suffer  " presentation"  to  him  at  the  good  lady's 
generous  but  ineffectual  hands,  and  had  in  fact  the 
next  instant,  left  alone  with  him,  bowed,  in  formal 
salutation,  the  massive,  curly,  witty  head,  so  "  roman 
tic"  yet  so  modern,  so  "artistic"  and  ironic  yet  some 
how  so  civic,  so  Gallic  yet  somehow  so  cosmic,  his 
personal  vision  of  which  had  not  hitherto  transcended 
that  of  the  possessor  of  a  signed  and  framed  photo 
graph  in  a  consecrated  quarter  of  a  writing-table. 

It  was  positive,  however,  that  poor  John  was  after 
ward  to  remember  of  this  conjunction  nothing  whatever 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

but  the  fact  of  the  great  man's  looking  at  him  very 
hard,  straight  in  the  eyes,  and  of  his  not  having  himself 
scrupled  to  do  as  much,  and  with  a  confessed  intensity 
of  appetite.  It  was  improbable,  he  was  to  recognise, 
that  they  had,  for  the  few  minutes,  only  stared  and 
grimaced,  like  pitted  boxers  or  wrestlers;  but  what  had 
abode  with  him  later  on,  none  the  less,  was  just  the 
cherished  memory  of  his  not  having  so  lost  presence  of 
mind  as  to  fail  of  feeding  on  his  impression.  It  was 
precious  and  precarious,  that  was  perhaps  all  there 
would  be  of  it;  and  his  subsequent  consciousness  was 
quite  to  cherish  this  queer  view  of  the  silence,  neither 
awkward  nor  empty  nor  harsh,  but  on  the  contrary 
quite  charged  and  brimming,  that  represented  for  him 
his  use,  his  unforgettable  enjoyment  in  fact,  of  his 
opportunity.  Had  nothing  passed  in  words?  Well, 
no  misery  of  murmured  "homage,"  thank  goodness; 
though  something  must  have  been  said,  certainly,  to 
lead  up,  as  they  put  it  at  the  theatre,  to  John's  hav 
ing  asked  the  head  of  the  profession,  before  they  sep 
arated,  if  he  by  chance  knew  who  the  so  radiantly 
handsome  young  woman  might  be,  the  one  who  had 
so  lately  come  in  and  who  wore  the  pale  yellow  dress, 
of  the  strange  tone,  and  the  magnificent  pearls.  They 
must  have  separated  soon,  it  was  further  to  have  been 
noted;  since  it  was  before  the  advance  of  the  pair,  their 
wonderful  dazzling  charge  upon  him,  that  he  had  dis 
tinctly  seen  the  great  man,  at  a  distance  again,  block 
out  from  his  sight  the  harmony  of  the  faded  gold  and 

16 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

the  pearls — to  speak  only  of  that — and  plant  himself 
there  (the  mere  high  Atlas-back  of  renown  to  Berridge 
now)  as  for  communion  with  them.  He  had  blocked 
everything  out,  to  this  tune,  effectually;  with  nothing 
of  the  matter  left  for  our  friend  meanwhile  but  that,  as 
he  had  said,  the  beautiful  lady  was  the  Princess.  What 
Princess,  or  the  Princess  of  what  ?— our  young  man  had 
afterward  wondered;  his  companion's  reply  having  lost 
itself  in  the  prelude  of  an  outburst  by  another  vocalist 
who  had  approached  the  piano. 

It  was  after  these  things  that  she  so  incredibly  came 
to  him,  attended  by  her  adorer — since  he  took  it  for 
absolute  that  the  young  Lord  was  her  adorer,  as  who 
indeed  mightn't  be  ? — and  scarce  waiting,  in  her  bright 
simplicity,  for  any  form  of  introduction.  It  may  thus 
be  said  in  a  word  that  this  was  the  manner  in  which 
she  made  our  hero's  acquaintance,  a  satisfaction  that 
she  on  the  spot  described  to  him  as  really  wanting  of 
late  to  her  felicity.  "I've  read  everything,  you  know, 
and  'The  Heart  of  Gold'  three  times":  she  put  it  all 
immediately  on  that  ground,  while  the  young  Lord 
now  smiled,  beside  her,  as  if  it  were  quite  the  sort  of 
thing  he  had  done  too;  and  while,  further,  the  author 
of  the  work  yielded  to  the  consciousness  that  whereas 
in  general  he  had  come  at  last  scarce  to  be  able  to  bear 
the  iteration  of  those  words,  which  affected  him  as  a 
mere  vain  vocal  convulsion,  so  not  a  breath  of  this 
association  now  attended  them,  so  such  a  person  as 
the  Princess  could  make  of  them  what  she  would. 

17 


THE   FINER  GRAIN 

Unless  it  was  to  be  really  what  he  would ! — this  occurred 
to  him  in  the  very  thick  of  the  prodigy,  no  single  shade 
of  possibility  of  which  was  less  prodigious  than  any 
other.  It  was  a  declaration,  simply,  the  admirable 
young  woman  was  treating  him  to,  a  profession  of 
" artistic  sympathy" — for  she  was  in  a  moment  to  use 
this  very  term  that  made  for  them  a  large,  clear,  com 
mon  ether,  an  element  all  uplifted  and  rare,  of  which 
they  could  equally  partake. 

If  she  was  Olympian — as  in  her  rich  and  regular 
young  beauty,  that  of  some  divine  Greek  mask  over- 
painted  say  by  Titian,  she  more  and  more  appeared  to 
him — this  offered  air  was  that  of  the  gods  themselves: 
she  might  have  been,  with  her  long  rustle  across  the 
room,  Artemis  decorated,  hung  with  pearls,  for  her 
worshippers,  yet  disconcerting  them  by  having,  under 
an  impulse  just  faintly  fierce,  snatched  the  cup  of  gold 
from  Hebe.  It  was  to  him,  John  Berridge,  she  thus 
publicly  offered  it;  and  it  was  his  over- topping  confrere 
of  shortly  before  who  was  the  worshipper  most  discon 
certed.  John  had  happened  to  catch,  even  at  its  dis 
tance,  after  these  friends  had  joined  him,  the  momentary 
deep,  grave  estimate,  in  the  great  Dramatist's  salient 
watching  eyes,  of  the  Princess's  so  singular  performance: 
the  touch  perhaps  this,  in  the  whole  business,  that 
made  Berridge's  sense  of  it  most  sharp.  The  sense  of 
it  as  prodigy  didn't  in  the  least  entail  his  feeling  abject 
— any  more,  that  is,  than  in  the  due  dazzled  degree; 
for  surely  there  would  have  been  supreme  wonder  in 

18 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 


the  eagerness  of  her  exchange  of  mature  glory  for  thin 
notoriety,  hadn't  it  still  exceeded  everything  that  an 
Olympian  of  such  race  should  have  found  herself  both 
ered,  as  they  said,  to  "read"  at  all — and  most  of  all 
to  read  three  times! 

With  the  turn  the  matter  took  as  an  effect  of  this 
meeting,  Berridge  was  more  than  once  to  find  himself 
almost  ashamed  for  her — since  it  seemed  never  to 
occur  to  her  to  be  so  for  herself:  he  was  jealous  of  the 
type  where  she  might  have  been  taken  as  insolently 
careless  of  it;  his  advantage  (unless  indeed  it  had  been 
his  ruin)  being  that  he  could  inordinately  reflect  upon 
it,  could  wander  off  thereby  into  kinds  of  licence  of 
which  she  was  incapable.  He  hadn't,  for  himself, 
waited  till  now  to  be  sure  of  what  he  would  do  were  he 
an  Olympian:  he  would  leave  his  own  stuff  snugly 
unread,  to  begin  with;  that  would  be  a  beautiful  start 
for  an  Olympian  career.  He  should  have  been  as  unable 
to  write  those  works  in  short  as  to  make  anything  else 
of  them;  and  he  should  have  had  no  more  arithmetic 
for  computing  fingers  than  any  perfect-headed  marble 
Apollo  mutilated  at  the  wrists.  He  should  have  con 
sented  to  know  but  the  grand  personal  adventure  on 
the  grand  personal  basis :  nothing  short  of  this,  no  poor 
cognisance  of  confusable,  pettifogging  things,  the  sphere 
of  earth-grubbing  questions  and  two-penny  issues,  would 
begin  to  be,  on  any  side,  Olympian  enough. 

Even  the  great  Dramatist,  with  his  tempered  and 
tested  steel  and  his  immense  " assured"  position,  even 


THE   FINER  GRAIN 

he  was  not  Olympian:  the  look,  full  of  the  torment  of 
earth,  with  which  he  had  seen  the  Princess  turn  her 
back,  and  for  such  a  purpose,  on  the  prized  privilege 
of  his  notice,  testified  sufficiently  to  that.  Still,  com 
paratively,  it  was  to  be  said,  the  question  of  a  personal 
relation  with  an  authority  so  eminent  on  the  subject 
of  the  passions — to  say  nothing  of  the  rest  of  his  charm 
— might  have  had  for  an  ardent  young  woman  (and 
the  Princess  was  unmistakably  ardent)  the  absolute 
attraction  of  romance:  unless,  again,  prodigy  of  prodi 
gies,  she  were  looking  for  her  romance  very  particularly 
elsewhere.  Yet  where  could  she  have  been  looking 
for  it,  Berridge  was  to  ask  himself  with  private  intensity, 
in  a  manner  to  leave  her  so  at  her  ease  for  appearing 
to  offer  him  everything? — so  free  to  be  quite  divinely 
gentle  with  him,  to  hover  there  before  him  in  all  her 
mild,  bright,  smooth  sublimity  and  to  say:  "I  should 
be  so  very  grateful  if  you'd  come  to  see  me." 

There  succeeded  this  a  space  of  time  of  which  he 
was  afterward  to  lose  all  account,  was  never  to  recover 
the  history;  his  only  coherent  view  of  it  being  that  an 
interruption,  some  incident  that  kept  them  a  while 
separate,  had  then  taken  place,  yet  that  during  their 
separation,  of  half  an  hour  or  whatever,  they  had  still 
somehow  not  lost  sight  of  each  other,  but  had  found 
their  eyes  meeting,  in  deep  communion,  all  across  the 
great  peopled  room;  meeting  and  wanting  to  meet, 
wanting — it  was  the  most  extraordinary  thing  in  the 
world  for  the  suppression  of  stages,  for  confessed  pre- 
20 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

cipitate  intensity — to  use  together  every  instant  of  the 
hour  that  might  be  left  them.  Yet  to  use  it  for  what  ? 
— unless,  like  beautiful  fabulous  figures  in  some  old- 
world  legend,  for  the  frankest  and  almost  the  crudest 
avowal  of  the  impression  they  had  made  on  each  other. 
He  couldn't  have  named,  later  on,  any  other  person 
she  had  during  this  space  been  engaged  with,  any  more 
than  he  was  to  remember  in  the  least  what  he  had  him 
self  ostensibly  done,  who  had  spoken  to  him,  whom 
he  had  spoken  to,  or  whether  he  hadn't  just  stood  and 
publicly  gaped  or  languished. 

Ah,  Olympians  were  unconventional  indeed  —  that 
was  a  part  of  their  high  bravery  and  privilege;  but  what 
it  also  appeared  to  attest  in  this  wondrous  manner  was 
that  they  could  communicate  to  their  chosen  in  three 
minutes,  by  the  mere  light  of  their  eyes,  the  same  shin 
ing  cynicism.  He  was  to  wonder  of  course,  tinglingly 
enough,  whether  he  had  really  made  an  ass  of  himself, 
and  there  was  this  amount  of  evidence  for  it  that  there 
certainly  had  been  a  series  of  moments  each  one  of 
which  glowed  with  the  lucid  sense  that,  as  she  couldn't 
like  him  as  much  as  that  either  for  his  acted  clap-trap 
or  for  his  printed  verbiage,  what  it  must  come  to  was 
that  she  liked  him,  and  to  such  a  tune,  just  for  himself 
and  quite  after  no  other  fashion  than  that  in  which 
every  goddess  in  the  calendar  had,  when  you  came  to 
look,  sooner  or  later  liked  some  prepossessing  young 
shepherd.  The  question  would  thus  have  been,  for 
him,  with  a  still  sharper  eventual  ache,  of  whether  he 

21 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

positively  had,  as  an  effect  of  the  miracle,  been  petri 
fied,  before  fifty  pair  of  eyes,  to  the  posture  of  a  pre 
possessing  shepherd — and  would  perhaps  have  left  him 
under  the  shadow  of  some  such  imputable  fatuity  if  his 
consciousness  hadn't,  at  a  given  moment,  cleared  up  to 
still  stranger  things. 

The  agent  of  the  change  was,  as  quite  congruously 
happened,  none  other  than  the  shining  youth  whom 
he  now  seemed  to  himself  to  have  been  thinking  of  for 
ever  so  long,  for  a  much  longer  time  than  he  had  ever 
in  his  life  spent  at  an  evening  party,  as  the  young  Lord : 
which  personage  suddenly  stood  before  him  again,  hold 
ing  him  up  an  odd  object  and  smiling,  as  if  in  reference 
to  it,  with  a  gladness  that  at  once  struck  our  friend  as 
almost  too  absurd  for  belief.  The  object  was  incon 
gruous  by  reason  of  its  being,  to  a  second  and  less  pre 
occupied  glance,  a  book;  and  what  had  befallen  Ber- 
ridge  within  twenty  minutes  was  that  they — the  Princess 
and  he,  that  is — had  got  such  millions  of  miles,  or  at 
least  such  thousands  of  years,  away  from  those  plati 
tudes.  The  book,  he  found  himself  assuming,  could 
only  be  his  book  (it  seemed  also  to  have  a  tawdry  red 
cover);  and  there  came  to  him  memories,  dreadfully 
false  notes  sounded  so  straight  again  by  his  new  ac 
quaintance,  of  certain  altogether  different  persons  who 
at  certain  altogether  different  parties  had  flourished  vol 
umes  before  him  very  much  with  that  insinuating  ges 
ture,  that  arch  expression,  and  that  fell  intention.  The 
meaning  of  these  things — of  all  possible  breaks  of  the 

22 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

charm  at  such  an  hour! — was  that  he  should  "signa 
ture"  the  ugly  thing,  and  with  a  characteristic  quota 
tion  or  sentiment:  that  was  the  way  people  simpered 
and  squirmed,  the  way  they  mouthed  and  beckoned, 
when  animated  by  such  purposes;  and  it  already,  on 
the  spot,  almost  broke  his  heart  to  see  such  a  type  as 
that  of  the  young  Lord  brought,  by  the  vulgarest  of 
fashions,  so  low.  This  state  of  quick  displeasure  in 
Berridge,  however,  was  founded  on  a  deeper  question 
— the  question  of  how  in  the  world  he  was  to  remain 
for  himself  a  prepossessing  shepherd  if  he  should  con 
sent  to  come  back  to  these  base  actualities.  It  was 
true  that  even  while  this  wonderment  held  him,  his 
aggressor's  perfect  good  conscience  had  placed  the 
matter  in  a  slightly  different  light. 

"By  an  extraordinary  chance  I've  found  a  copy  of 
my  friend's  novel  on  one  of  the  tables  here — I  see  by 
the  inscription  that  she  has  presented  it  to  Gloriani. 
So  if  you'd  like  to  glance  at  it — !"  And  the  young 
Lord,  in  the  pride  of  his  association  with  the  emi 
nent  thing,  held  it  out  to  Berridge  as  artlessly  as  if  it 
had  been  a  striking  natural  specimen  of  some  sort,  a 
rosy  round  apple  grown  in  his  own  orchard,  or  an  ex 
ceptional  precious  stone,  to  be  admired  for  its  weight 
and  lustre.  Berridge  accepted  the  offer  mechanically — 
relieved  at  the  prompt  fading  of  his  worst  fear,  yet 
feeling  in  himself  a  tell-tale  facial  blankness  for  the  still 
absolutely  anomalous  character  of  his  friend's  appeal. 
He  was  even  tempted  for  a  moment  to  lay  the  volume 

23 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

down  without  looking  at  it — only  with  some  extem 
porised  promise  to  borrow  it  of  their  host  and  take  it 
home,  to  give  himself  to  it  at  an  easier  moment.  Then 
the  very  expression  of  his  fellow-guest's  own  counte 
nance  determined  in  him  a  different  and  a  still  more 
dreadful  view;  in  fact  an  immediate  collapse  of  the 
dream  in  which  he  had  for  the  splendid  previous  space 
of  time  been  living.  The  young  Lord  himself,  in  his 
radiant  costly  barbarism,  figured  far  better  than  John 
Berridge  could  do  the  prepossessing  shepherd,  the 
beautiful  mythological  mortal  "distinguished"  by  a 
goddess;  for  our  hero  now  saw  that  his  whole  manner 
of  dealing  with  his  ridiculous  tribute  was  marked 
exactly  by  the  grand  simplicity,  the  prehistoric  good 
faith,  as  one  might  call  it,  of  far-off  romantic  and 
"  plastic"  creatures,  figures  of  exquisite  Arcadian  stamp, 
glorified  rustics  like  those  of  the  train  of  peasants  in 
"A  Winter's  Tale,"  who  thought  nothing  of  such 
treasure-trove,  on  a  Claude  Lorrain  sea-strand,  as  a 
royal  infant  wrapped  in  purple:  something  in  that 
fabulous  style  of  exhibition  appearing  exactly  what  his 
present  demonstration  might  have  been  prompted  by. 
"The  Top  of  the  Tree,  by  Amy  Evans  "—scarce 
credible  words  floating  before  Berridge  after  he  had 
with  an  anguish  of  effort  dropped  his  eyes  on  the  im 
portunate  title-page — represented  an  object  as  alien  to 
the  careless  grace  of  goddess-haunted  Arcady  as  a 
washed-up  "kodak"  from  a  wrecked  ship  might  have 
been  to  the  appreciation  of  some  islander  of  wholly 

24 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

unvisited  seas.  Nothing  could  have  been  more  in  the 
tone  of  an  islander  deplorably  diverted  from  his  native 
interests  and  dignities  than  the  glibness  with  which 
John's  own  child  of  nature  went  on.  "It's  her  pen- 
name,  Amy  Evans" — he  couldn't  have  said  it  otherwise 
had  he  been  a  blue-chinned  penny-a-liner ;  yet  marking 
it  with  a  disconnectedness  of  intelligence  that  kept  up 
all  the  poetry  of  his  own  situation  and  only  crashed 
into  that  of  other  persons.  The  reference  put  the  au 
thor  of  "The  Heart  of  Gold"  quite  into  his  place,  but 
left  the  speaker  absolutely  free  of  Arcady.  "Thanks 
awfully" — Berridge  somehow  clutched  at  that,  to  keep 
everything  from  swimming.  "Yes,  I  should  like  to 
look  at  it,"  he  managed,  horribly  grimacing  now,  he 
believed,  to  say;  and  there  was  in  fact  a  strange  short 
interlude  after  this  in  which  he  scarce  knew  what  had 
become  of  any  one  or  of  anything;  in  which  he  only 
seemed  to  himself  to  stand  alone  in  a  desolate  place 
where  even  its  desolation  didn't  save  him  from  having 
to  stare  at  the  greyest  of  printed  pages.  Nothing  here 
helped  anything  else,  since  the  stamped  greyness  didn't 
even  in  itself  make  it  impossible  his  eyes  should  follow 
such  sentences  as:  "The  loveliness  of  the  face,  which 
was  that  of  the  glorious  period  in  which  Pheidias 
reigned  supreme,  and  which  owed  its  most  exquisite 
note  to  that  shell-like  curl  of  the  upper  lip  which  always 
somehow  recalls  for  us  the  smile  with  which  wind 
blown  Astarte  must  have  risen  from  the  salt  sea  to 
which  she  owed  her  birth  and  her  terrible  moods";  or 

25 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"It  was  too  much  for  all  the  passionate  woman  in  her, 
and  she  let  herself  go,  over  the  flowering  land  that  had 
been,  but  was  no  longer  their  love,  with  an  effect  of 
blighting  desolation  that  might  have  proceeded  from 
one  of  the  more  physical,  though  not  more  awful, 
convulsions  of  nature." 

He  seemed  to  know  later  on  that  other  and  much 
more  natural  things  had  occurred ;  as  that,  for  instance, 
with  now  at  last  a  definite  intermission  of  the  rare 
music  that  for  a  long  time  past,  save  at  the  briefest 
intervals,  had  kept  all  participants  ostensibly  attentive 
and  motionless,  and  that  in  spite  of  its  high  quality  and 
the  supposed  privilege  of  listening  to  it  he  had  allowed 
himself  not  to  catch  a  note  of,  there  was  a  great  rustling 
and  shifting  and  vociferous  drop  to  a  lower  plane,  more 
marked  still  with  the  quick  clearance  of  a  way  to  sup 
per  and  a  lively  dispersal  of  most  of  the  guests.  Hadn't 
he  made  out,  through  the  queer  glare  of  appearances, 
though  they  yet  somehow  all  came  to  him  as  confused 
and  unreal,  that  the  Princess  was  no  longer  there, 
wasn't  even  only  crowded  out  of  his  range  by  the  im 
mediate  multiplication  of  her  court,  the  obsequious 
court  that  the  change  of  pitch  had  at  once  permitted  to 
close  round  her;  that  Gloriani  had  offered  her  his  arm, 
in  a  gallant  official  way,  as  to  the  greatest  lady  present, 
and  that  he  was  left  with  half  a  dozen  persons  more 
knowing  than  the  others,  who  had  promptly  taken, 
singly  or  in  couples,  to  a  closer  inspection  of  the  fine 
small  scattered  treasures  of  the  studio? 

26 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

He  himself  stood  there,  rueful  and  stricken,  nursing 
a  silly  red-bound  book  under  his  arm  very  much  as  if 
he  might  have  been  holding  on  tight  to  an  upright  stake, 
or  to  the  nearest  piece  of  furniture,  during  some  im 
pression  of  a  sharp  earthquake-shock  or  of  an  attack 
of  dyspeptic  dizziness;  albeit  indeed  that  he  wasn't 
conscious  of  this  absurd,  this  instinctive  nervous  clutch 
till  the  thing  that  was  to  be  more  wonderful  than  any 
yet  suddenly  flared  up  for  him — the  sight  of  the  Princess 
again  on  the  threshold  of  the  room,  poised  there  an 
instant,  in  her  exquisite  grace,  for  recovery  of  some 
one  or  of  something,  and  then,  at  recognition  of  him, 
coming  straight  to  him  across  the  empty  place  as  if  he 
alone,  and  nobody  and  nothing  else,  were  what  she 
incredibly  wanted.  She  was  there,  she  was  radiantly 
at  him,  as  if  she  had  known  and  loved  him  for  ten 
years — ten  years  during  which,  however,  she  had  never 
quite  been  able,  in  spite  of  undiscouraged  attempts, 
to  cure  him,  as  goddesses  had  to  cure  shepherds,  of  his 
mere  mortal  shyness. 

"Ah  no,  not  that  one!"  she  said  at  once,  with  her 
divine  familiarity;  for  she  had  in  the  flash  of  an  eye 
" spotted"  the  particular  literary  production  he  seemed 
so  very  fondly  to  have  possessed  himself  of  and  against 
which  all  the  Amy  Evans  in  her,  as  she  would  doubtless 
have  put  it,  clearly  wished  on  the  spot  to  discriminate. 
She  pulled  it  away  from  him;  he  let  it  go;  he  scarce 
knew  what  was  happening — only  made  out  that  she 
distinguished  the  right  one,  the  one  that  should  have 

27 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

been  shown  him,  as  blue  or  green  or  purple,  and  inti 
mated  that  her  other  friend,  her  fellow-Olympian,  as 
Berridge  had  thought  of  him  from  the  first,  really  did 
too  clumsily  bungle  matters,  poor  dear,  with  his  offi- 
ciousness  over  the  red  one!  She  went  on  really  as  if 
she  had  come  for  that,  some  such  rectification,  some 
such  eagerness  of  reunion  with  dear  Mr.  Berridge, 
some  talk,  after  all  the  tiresome  music,  of  questions 
really  urgent;  while,  thanks  to  the  supreme  strangeness 
of  it,  the  high  tide  of  golden  fable  floated  him  afresh, 
and  her  pretext  and  her  plea,  the  queerness  of  her 
offered  motive,  melted  away  after  the  fashion  of  the 
enveloping  clouds  that  do  their  office  in  epics  and  idylls. 
"You  didn't  perhaps  know  I'm  Amy  Evans,"  she 
smiled,  "or  even  perhaps  that  I  write  in  English— 
which  I  love,  I  assure  you,  as  much  as  you  can  yourself 
do,  and  which  gives  one  (doesn't  it?  for  who  should 
know  if  not  you  ?)  the  biggest  of  publics.  I  t  just  love ' 
— don't  they  say? — your  American  millions;  and  all 
the  more  that  they  really  take  me  for  Amy  Evans,  as 
I've  just  wanted  to  be  taken,  to  be  loved  too  for  myself, 
don't  you  know? — that  they  haven't  seemed  to  try  at 
all  to  'go  behind'  (don't  you  say?)  my  poor  dear  little 
nom  de  guerre.  But  it's  the  new  one,  my  last,  'The 
Velvet  Glove,'  that  I  should  like  you  to  judge  me  by — 
if  such  a  corvee  isn't  too  horrible  for  you  to  think  of; 
though  I  admit  it's  a  move  straight  in  the  romantic 
direction — since  after  all  (for  I  might  as  well  make  a 
clean  breast  of  it)  it's  dear  old  discredited  romance  that 

28 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

I'm  most  in  sympathy  with.  I'll  send  you  'The  Vel 
vet  Glove'  to-morrow,  if  you  can  find  half  an  hour  for 
it;  and  then — and  then — !"  She  paused  as  for  the 
positive  bright  glory  of  her  meaning. 

It  could  only  be  so  extraordinary,  her  meaning, 
whatever  it  was,  that  the  need  in  him  that  would— 
whatever  it  was  again ! — meet  it  most  absolutely  formed 
the  syllables  on  his  lips  as:  "Will  you  be  very,  very 
kind  to  me?" 

"  Ah  '  kind,'  dear  Mr.  Berridge  ?  '  Kind,'  "  she  splen 
didly  laughed,  "is  nothing  to  what — !"  But  she 
pulled  herself  up  again  an  instant.  "Well,  to  what  I 
want  to  be!  Just  see"  she  said,  "how  I  want  to  be!" 
It  was  exactly,  he  felt,  what  he  couldn't  but  see — in 
spite  of  books  and  publics  and  pen-names,  in  spite  of 
the  really  "decadent"  perversity,  recalling  that  of  the 
most  irresponsibly  insolent  of  the  old  Romans  and 
Byzantines,  that  could  lead  a  creature  so  formed  for 
living  and  breathing  her  Romance,  and  so  committed, 
up  to  the  eyes,  to  the  constant  fact  of  her  personal  im 
mersion  in  it  and  genius  for  it,  the  dreadful  amateurish 
dance  of  ungrammatically  scribbling  it,  with  editions 
and  advertisements  and  reviews  and  royalties  and  every 
other  futile  item:  since  what  was  more  of  the  deep 
essence  of  throbbing  intercourse  itself  than  this  very 
act  of  her  having  broken  away  from  people,  in  the  other 
room,  to  whom  he  was  as  nought,  of  her  having,  with 
her  cranerie  of  audacity  and  indifference,  just  turned 
her  back  on  them  all  as  soon  as  she  had  begun  to  miss 

29 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

him  ?  What  was  more  of  it  than  her  having  forbidden 
them,  by  a  sufficient  curt  ring  of  her  own  supremely 
silver  tone,  to  attempt  to  check  or  criticise  her  freedom, 
than  her  having  looked  him  up,  at  his  distance,  under 
all  the  noses  he  had  put  out  of  joint,  so  as  to  let  them 
think  whatever  they  might — not  of  herself  (much  she 
troubled  to  care!)  but  of  the  new  champion  to  be  reck 
oned  with,  the  invincible  young  lion  of  the  day  ?  What 
was  more  of  it  in  short  than  her  having  perhaps  even 
positively  snubbed  for  him  the  great  mystified  Sculptor 
and  the  great  bewildered  Dramatist,  treated  to  this 
queer  experience  for  the  first  time  of  their  lives  ? 

It  all  came  back  again  to  the  really  great  ease  of 
really  great  ladies,  and  to  the  perfect  facility  of  every 
thing  when  once  they  were  great  enough.  That  might 
become  the  delicious  thing  to  him,  he  more  and  more 
felt,  as  soon  as  it  should  be  supremely  attested;  it  was 
ground  he  had  ventured  on,  scenically,  representation- 
ally,  in  the  artistic  sphere,  but  without  ever  dreaming 
he  should  "realise"  it  thus  in  the  social.  Handsomely, 
gallantly  just  now,  moreover,  he  didn't  so  much  as  let 
it  occur  to  him  that  the  social  experience  would  per 
haps  on  some  future  occasion  richly  profit  further 
scenic  efforts;  he  only  lost  himself  in  the  consciousness 
of  all  she  invited  him  to  believe.  It  took  licence,  this 
consciousness,  the  next  moment,  for  a  tremendous  fur 
ther  throb,  from  what  she  had  gone  on  to  say  to  him 
in  so  many  words — though  indeed  the  words  were  noth 
ing  and  it  was  all  a  matter  but  of  the  implication  that 

30 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

glimmered  through  them:  "Do  you  want  very  much 
your  supper  here?"  And  then  while  he  felt  himself 
glare,  for  charmed  response,  almost  to  the  point  of  his 
tears  rising  with  it:  "Because  if  you  don't !" 

"Because  if  I  don't — ?"  She  had  paused,  not  from 
the  faintest  shade  of  timidity,  but  clearly  for  the  pleas 
ure  of  making  him  press. 

"Why  shouldn't  we  go  together,  letting  me  drive 
you  home?" 

"You'll  come  home  with  me?"  gasped  John  Ber- 
ridge  while  the  perspiration  on  his  brow  might  have 
been  the  morning  dew  on  a  high  lawn  of  Mount  Ida. 

"No — you  had  better  come  with  me.  That's  what 
I  mean;  but  I  certainly  will  come  to  you  with  pleasure 
some  time  if  you'll  let  me." 

She  made  no  more  than  that  of  the  most  fatuous 
of  freedoms,  as  he  felt  directly  he  had  spoken  that  it 
might  have  seemed  to  her;  and  before  he  had  even 
time  to  welcome  the  relief  of  not  having  then  him 
self,  for  beastly  contrition,  to  make  more  of  it,  she  had 
simply  mentioned,  with  her  affectionate  ease,  that  she 
wanted  to  get  away,  that  of  the  bores  there  she  might 
easily,  after  a  little,  have  too  much,  and  that  if  he'd 
but  say  the  word  they'd  nip  straight  out  together  by  an 
independent  door  and  be  sure  to  find  her  motor  in  the 
court.  What  word  he  had  found  to  say,  he  was  after 
ward  to  reflect,  must  have  little  enough  mattered;  for 
he  was  to  have  kept,  of  what  then  occurred,  but  a  single 
other  impression,  that  of  her  great  fragrant  rustle  beside 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

him  over  the  rest  of  the  ample  room  and  toward  their 
nearest  and  friendliest  resource,  the  door  by  which  he 
had  come  in  and  which  gave  directly  upon  a  staircase. 
This  independent  image  was  just  that  of  the  only  other 
of  his  fellow-guests  with  whom  he  had  been  closely 
concerned;  he  had  thought  of  him  rather  indeed,  up 
to  that  moment,  as  the  Princess's  fellow- Olympian — 
but  a  new  momentary  vision  of  him  seemed  now  to 
qualify  it. 

The  young  Lord  had  reappeared  within  a  minute 
on  the  threshold,  that  of  the  passage  from  the  supper- 
room,  lately  crossed  by  the  Princess  herself,  and  Ber- 
ridge  felt  him  there,  saw  him  there,  wondered  about 
him  there,  all,  for  the  first  minute,  without  so  much  as 
a  straight  look  at  him.  He  would  have  come  to  learn 
the  reason  of  his  friend's  extraordinary  public  demon 
stration — having  more  right  to  his  curiosity,  or  his 
anxiety  or  whatever,  than  any  one  else;  he  would  be 
taking  in  the  remarkable  appearances  that  thus  com 
pleted  it,  and  would  perhaps  be  showing  quite  a  dif 
ferent  face  for  them,  at  the  point  they  had  reached, 
than  any  that  would  have  hitherto  consorted  with  the 
beautiful  security  of  his  own  position.  So  much,  on 
our  own  young  man's  part,  for  this  first  flush  of  a  pre 
sumption  that  he  might  have  stirred  the  germs  of  ire 
in  a  celestial  breast;  so  much  for  the  moment  during 
which  nothing  would  have  induced  him  to  betray,  to  a 
possibly  rueful  member  of  an  old  aristocracy,  a  vulgar 
elation  or  a  tickled,  unaccustomed  glee.  His  inevi- 

32 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

table  second  thought  was,  however,  it  has  to  be  con 
fessed,  another  matter,  which  took  a  different  turn— 
for,  frankly,  all  the  conscious  conqueror  in  him,  as 
Amy  Evans  would  again  have  said,  couldn't  forego  a 
probably  supreme  consecration.  He  treated  himself  to 
no  prolonged  reach  of  vision,  but  there  was  something 
he  nevertheless  fully  measured  for  five  seconds — the 
sharp  truth  of  the  fact,  namely,  of  how  the  interested 
observer  in  the  doorway  must  really  have  felt  about 
him.  Rather  disconcertingly,  hereupon,  the  sharp  truth 
proved  to  be  that  the  most  amused,  quite  the  most 
encouraging  and  the  least  invidious  of  smiles  graced 
the  young  Lord's  handsome  countenance — forming,  in 
short,  his  final  contribution  to  a  display  of  high  social 
candour  unprecedented  in  our  hero's  experience.  No, 
he  wasn't  jealous,  didn't  do  John  Berridge  the  honour 
to  be,  to  the  extent  of  the  least  glimmer  of  a  spark  of 
it,  but  was  so  happy  to  see  his  immortal  mistress  do 
what  she  liked  that  he  could  positively  beam  at  the  odd 
circumstance  of  her  almost  lavishing  public  caresses 
on  a  gentleman  not,  after  all,  of  negligible  importance. 

Ill 

WELL,  it  was  all  confounding  enough,  but  this  in 
dication  in  particular  would  have  jostled  our  friend's 
grasp  of  the  presented  cup  had  he  had,  during  the  next 
ten  minutes,  more  independence  of  thought.  That, 
however,  was  out  of  the  question  when  one  positively 
felt,  as  with  a  pang  somewhere  deep  within,  or  even 

33 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

with  a  smothered  cry  for  alarm,  one's  whole  sense  of 
proportion  shattered  at  a  blow  and  ceasing  to  serve. 
"Not  straight,  and  not  too  fast,  shall  we?"  was  the 
ineffable  young  woman's  appeal  to  him,  a  few  minutes 
later,  beneath  the  wide  glass  porch-cover  that  sheltered 
their  brief  wait  for  their  chariot  of  fire.  It  was  there 
even  as  she  spoke;  the  capped  charioteer,  with  a  great 
clean  curve,  drew  up  at  the  steps  of  the  porch,  and  the 
Princess's  footman,  before  rejoining  him  in  front,  held 
open  the  door  of  the  car.  She  got  in,  and  Berridge 
was  the  next  instant  beside  her;  he  could  only  say: 
"As  you  like,  Princess — where  you  will;  certainly  let 
us  prolong  it;  let  us  prolong  everything;  don't  let  us 
have  it  over — strange  and  beautiful  as  it  can  only  be! 
— a  moment  sooner  than  we  must."  So  he  spoke,  in 
the  security  of  their  intimate  English,  while  the  perpen 
dicular  imperturbable  valet-de-pied,  white-faced  in  the 
electric  light,  closed  them  in  and  then  took  his  place 
on  the  box  where  the  rigid  liveried  backs  of  the  two 
men,  presented  through  the  glass,  were  like  a  protect 
ing  wall;  such  a  guarantee  of  privacy  as  might  come — 
it  occurred  to  Berridge' s  inexpugnable  fancy — from  a 
vision  of  tall  guards  erect  round  Eastern  seraglios. 

His  companion  had  said  something,  by  the  time  they 
started,  about  their  taking  a  turn,  their  looking  out 
for  a  few  of  the  night- views  of  Paris  that  were  so  won 
derful;  and  after  that,  in  spite  of  his  constantly  prized 
sense  of  knowing  his  enchanted  city  and  his  way  about, 
he  ceased  to  follow  or  measure  their  course,  content  as 

34 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

he  was  with  the  particular  exquisite  assurance  it  gave 
him.  That  was  knowing  Paris,  of  a  wondrous  bland 
April  night;  that  was  hanging  over  it  from  vague  con 
secrated  lamp-studded  heights  and  taking  in,  spread 
below  and  afar,  the  great  scroll  of  all  its  irresistible 
story,  pricked  out,  across  river  and  bridge  and  radiant 
place,  and  along  quays  and  boulevards  and  avenues, 
and  around  monumental  circles  and  squares,  in  syl 
lables  of  fire,  and  sketched  and  summarised,  further 
and  further,  in  the  dim  fire-dust  of  endless  avenues; 
that  was  all  of  the  essence  of  fond  and  thrilled  and 
throbbing  recognition,  with  a  thousand  things  under 
stood  and  a  flood  of  response  conveyed,  a  whole  familiar 
possessive  feeling  appealed  to  and  attested. 

"From  you,  you  know,  it  would  be  such  a  pleasure, 
and  I  think — in  fact  I'm  sure — it  would  do  so  much 
for  the  thing  in  America."  Had  she  gone  on  as  they 
went,  or  had  there  been  pauses  of  easy  and  of  charmed 
and  of  natural  silence,  breaks  and  drops  from  talk,  but 
only  into  greater  confidence  and  sweetness? — such  as 
her  very  gesture  now  seemed  a  part  of;  her  laying  her 
gloved  hand,  for  emphasis,  on  the  back  of  his  own, 
which  rested  on  his  knee  and  which  took  in  from  the 
act  he  scarce  knew  what  melting  assurance.  The  em 
phasis,  it  was  true — this  came  to  him  even  while  for 
a  minute  he  held  his  breath — seemed  rather  that  of 
Amy  Evans;  and  if  her  talk,  while  they  rolled,  had 
been  in  the  sense  of  these  words  (he  had  really  but 
felt  that  they  were  shut  intimately  in  together,  all  his 

35 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

consciousness,  all  his  discrimination  of  meanings  and 
indications  being  so  deeply  and  so  exquisitely  merged 
in  that)  the  case  wasn't  as  surely  and  sublimely,  as 
extravagantly,  as  fabulously  romantic  for  him  as  his 
excited  pulses  had  been  seeming  to  certify.  Her  hand 
was  there  on  his  own,  in  precious  living  proof,  and 
splendid  Paris  hung  over  them,  as  a  consecrating  can 
opy,  her  purple  night  embroidered  with  gold;  yet  he 
waited,  something  stranger  still  having  glimmered  for 
him,  waited  though  she  left  her  hand,  which  expressed 
emphasis  and  homage  and  tenderness,  and  anything 
else  she  liked  indeed — since  it  was  all  then  a  matter  of 
what  he  next  heard  and  what  he  slowly  grew  cold  as 
he  took  from  her. 

"You  know  they  do  it  here  so  charmingly — it's  a 
compliment  a  clever  man  is  always  so  glad  to  pay  a 
literary  friend,  and  sometimes,  in  the  case  of  a  great 
name  like  yours,  it  renders  such  a  service  to  a  poor 
little  book  like  mine!"  She  spoke  ever  so  humbly  and 
yet  ever  so  gaily — and  still  more  than  before  with  this 
confidence  of  the  sincere  admirer  and  the  comrade. 
That,  yes,  through  his  sudden  sharpening  chill,  was 
what  first  became  distinct  for  him;  she  was  mention 
ing  somehow  her  explanation  and  her  conditions — her 
motive,  in  fine,  disconcerting,  deplorable,  dreadful,  in 
respect  to  the  experience,  otherwise  so  boundless,  that 
he  had  taken  her  as  having  opened  to  him;  and  she 
was  doing  it,  above  all,  with  the  clearest  coolness  of 
her  general  privilege.  What  in  particular  she  was 

36 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

talking  about  he  as  yet,  still  holding  his  breath,  won 
dered;  it  was  something  she  wanted  him  to  do  for  her 
— which  was  exactly  what  he  had  hoped,  but  some 
thing  of  what  trivial  and,  heaven  forgive  them  both, 
of  what  dismal  order  ?  Most  of  all,  meanwhile,  he  felt 
the  dire  penetration  of  two  or  three  of  the  words  she 
had  used;  so  that  after  a  painful  minute  the  quaver  with 
which  he  repeated  them  resembled  his-drawing,  slowly, 
carefully,  timidly,  some  barbed  dart  out  of  his  flesh. 

"A  'literary  friend'?"  he  echoed  as  he  turned  his 
face  more  to  her;  so  that,  as  they  sat,  the  whites  of  her 
eyes,  near  to  his  own,  gleamed  in  the  dusk  like  some 
silver  setting  of  deep  sapphires. 

It  made  her  smile — which  in  their  relation  now  was 
like  the  breaking  of  a  cool  air-wave  over  the  conscious 
sore  flush  that  maintained  itself  through  his  general 
chill.  "Ah,  of  course  you  don't  allow  that  I  am  liter 
ary — and  of  course  if  you're  awfully  cruel  and  critical 
and  incorruptible  you  won't  let  it  say  for  me  what  I 
so  want  it  should!" 

"  Where  are  we,  where,  in  the  name  of  all  that's 
damnably,  of  all  that's  grotesquely  delusive,  are  we?" 
he  said,  without  a  sign,  to  himself;  which  was  the  form 
of  his  really  being  quite  at  sea  as  to  what  she  was 
talking  about.  That  uncertainty  indeed  he  could  but 
frankly  betray  by  taking  her  up,  as  he  cast  about  him, 
on  the  particular  ambiguity  that  his  voice  perhaps 
already  showed  him  to  find  most  irritating.  "Let  it 

show?    'It,'  dear  Princess ?" 

37 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"Why,  my  dear  man,  let  your  Preface  show,  the 
lovely,  friendly,  irresistible  log-rolling  Preface  that  I've 
been  asking  you  if  you  wouldn't  be  an  angel  and  write 
for  me." 

He  took  it  in  with  a  deep  long  gulp — he  had  never, 
it  seemed  to  him,  had  to  swallow  anything  so  bitter. 
"You've  been  asking  me  if  I  wouldn't  write  you  a 
Preface?" 

"To  'The  Velvet  Glove'— after  I've  sent  it  to  you 
and  you've  judged  if  you  really  can.  Of  course  I 
don't  want  you  to  perjure  yourself;  but" — and  she 
fairly  brushed  him  again,  at  their  close  quarters,  with 
her  fresh  fragrant  smile — "I  do  want  you  so  to  like 
me,  and  to  say  it  all  out  beautifully  and  publicly." 
"You  want  me  to  like  you,  Princess?" 
"But,  heaven  help  us,  haven't  you  understood?" 
Nothing  stranger  could  conceivably  have  been,  it 
struck  him — if  he  was  right  now — than  this  exquisite 
intimacy  of  her  manner  of  setting  him  down  on  the 
other  side  of  an  abyss.  It  was  as  if  she  had  lifted  him 
first  in  her  beautiful  arms,  had  raised  him  up  high, 
high,  high,  to  do  it,  pressing  him  to  her  immortal  young 
breast  while  he  let  himself  go,  and  then,  by  some  ex 
traordinary  effect  of  her  native  force  and  her  alien 
quality,  setting  him  down  exactly  where  she  wanted  him 
to  be — which  was  a  thousand  miles  away  from  her. 
Once  more,  so  preposterously  face  to  face  with  her  for 
these  base  issues,  he  took  it  all  in;  after  which  he  felt 
his  eyes  close,  for  amazement,  despair  and  shame,  and 

38 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

his  head,  which  he  had  some  time  before,  baring  his 
brow  to  the  mild  night,  eased  of  its  crush-hat,  sink  to 
confounded  rest  on  the  upholstered  back  of  the  seat. 
The  act,  the  ceasing  to  see,  and  if  possible  to  hear,  was 
for  the  moment  a  retreat,  an  escape  from  a  state  that 
he  felt  himself  fairly  flatter  by  thinking  of  it  as  "  awk 
ward";  the  state  of  really  wishing  that  his  humiliation 
might  end,  and  of  wondering  in  fact  if  the  most  decent 
course  open  to  him  mightn't  be  to  ask  her  to  stop  the 
motor  and  let  him  down. 

He  spoke  no  word  for  a  long  minute,  or  for  consider 
ably  more  than  that;  during  which  time  the  motor  went 
and  went,  now  even  somewhat  faster,  and  he  knew, 
through  his  closed  eyes,  that  the  outer  lights  had  begun 
to  multiply  and  that  they  were  getting  back  somewhere 
into  the  spacious  and  decorative  quarters.  He  knew 
this,  and  also  that  his  retreat,  for  all  his  attitude  as  of 
accommodating  thought,  his  air — that  presently  and 
quickly  came  to  him — of  having  perhaps  gathered  him 
self  in,  for  an  instant,  at  her  behest,  to  turn  over,  in 
his  high  ingenuity,  some  humbugging  "rotten"  phrase 
or  formula  that  he  might  place  at  her  service  and  make 
the  note  of  such  an  effort;  he  became  aware,  I  say,  that 
his  lapse  was  but  a  half-retreat,  with  her  strenuous 
presence  and  her  earnest  pressure  and  the  close  cool 
respiration  of  her  good  faith  absolutely  timing  the 
moments  of  his  stillness  and  the  progress  of  the  car. 
Yes,  it  was  wondrous  well,  he  had  all  but  made  the 
biggest  of  all  fools  of  himself,  almost  as  big  a  one  as 

39 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

she  was  still,  to  every  appearance,  in  her  perfect  seren 
ity,  trying  to  make  of  him;  and  the  one  straight  answer 
to  it  would  be  that  he  should  reach  forward  and  touch 
the  footman's  shoulder  and  demand  that  the  vehicle 
itself  should  make  an  end. 

That  would  be  an  answer,  however,  he  continued 
intensely  to  see,  only  to  inanely  importunate,  to  utterly 
superfluous  Amy  Evans — not  a  bit  to  his  at  last  exqui 
sitely  patient  companion,  who  was  clearly  now  quite 
taking  it  from  him  that  what  kept  him  in  his  attitude 
was  the  spring  of  the  quick  desire  to  oblige  her,  the 
charming  loyal  impulse  to  consider  a  little  what  he 
could  do  for  her,  say  "handsomely  yet  conscientiously" 
(oh  the  loveliness!)  before  he  should  commit  himself. 
She  was  enchanted — that  seemed  to  breathe  upon  him; 
she  waited,  she  hung  there,  she  quite  bent  over  him, 
as  Diana  over  the  sleeping  Endymion,  while  all  the 
conscientious  man  of  letters  in  him,  as  she  might  so 
supremely  have  phrased  it,  struggled  with  the  more 
peccable,  the  more  muddled  and  "squared,"  though, 
for  her  own  ideal,  the  so  much  more  banal  comrade. 
Yes,  he  could  keep  it  up  now — that  is  he  could  hold 
out  for  his  real  reply,  could  meet  the  rather  marked 
tension  of  the  rest  of  their  passage  as  well  as  she;  he 
should  be  able  somehow  or  other  to  make  his  word 
less  detachment,  the  tribute  of  his  ostensibly  deep 
consideration  of  her  request,  a  retreat  in  good  order. 
She  was,  for  herself,  to  the  last  point  of  her  guileless 
fatuity,  Amy  Evans  and  an  asker  for  "lifts,"  a  con- 

40 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

ceiver  of  twaddle  both  in  herself  and  in  him;  or  at 
least,  so  far  as  she  fell  short  of  all  this  platitude,  it  was 
no  fault  of  the  really  affecting  folly  of  her  attempt  .to 
become  a  mere  magazine  mortal  after  the  only  fashion 
she  had  made  out,  to  the  intensification  of  her  self-com 
placency,  that  she  might. 

Nothing  might  thus  have  touched  him  more — if  to 
be  touched,  beyond  a  certain  point,  hadn't  been  to  be 
squared — than  the  way  she  failed  to  divine  the  bearing 
of  his  thoughts;  so  that  she  had  probably  at  no  one 
small  crisis  of  her  life  felt  so  much  a  promise  in  the 
flutter  of  her  own  as  on  the  occasion  of  the  beautiful 
act  she  indulged  in  at  the  very  moment,  he  was  after 
ward  to  recognise,  of  their  sweeping  into  her  great 
smooth,  empty,  costly  street — a  desert,  at  that  hour,  of 
lavish  lamplight  and  sculptured  stone.  She  raised  to 
her  lips  the  hand  she  had  never  yet  released  and  kept 
it  there  a  moment  pressed  close  against  them;  he  him 
self  closing  his  eyes  to  the  deepest  detachment  he  was 
capable  of  while  he  took  in  with  a  smothered  sound  of 
pain  that  this  was  the  conferred  bounty  by  which  Amy 
Evans  sought  most  expressively  to  encourage,  to  sus 
tain  and  to  reward.  The  motor  had  slackened  and  in 
a  moment  would  stop;  and  meanwhile  even  after  lower 
ing  his  hand  again  she  hadn't  let  it  go.  This  enabled 
it,  while  he  after  a  further  moment  roused  himself  to  a 
more  confessed  consciousness,  to  form  with  his  friend's 
a  more  active  relation,  to  possess  him  of  hers,  in  turn, 
and  with  an  intention  the  straighter  that  her  glove  had 

41 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

by  this  time  somehow  come  off.  Bending  over  it  with 
out  hinderance,  he  returned  as  firmly  and  fully  as  the 
application  of  all  his  recovered  wholeness  of  feeling, 
under  his  moustache,  might  express,  the  consecration 
the  bareness  of  his  own  knuckles  had  received;  only 
after  which  it  was  that,  still  thus  drawing  out  his  grasp 
of  her,  and  having  let  down  their  front  glass  by  his 
free  hand,  he  signified  to  the  footman  his  view  of  their 
stopping  short. 

They  had  arrived;  the  high,  closed  porte-cochere,  in 
its  crested  stretch  of  wall,  awaited  their  approach;  but 
his  gesture  took  effect,  the  car  pulled  up  at  the  edge  of 
the  pavement,  the  man,  in  an  instant,  was  at  the  door 
and  had  opened  it;  quickly  moving  across  the  walk, 
the  next  moment,  to  press  the  bell  at  the  gate.  Ber- 
ridge,  as  his  hand  now  broke  away,  felt  he  had  cut  his 
cable;  with  which,  after  he  had  stepped  out,  he  raised 
again  the  glass  he  had  lowered  and  closed,  its  own 
being  already  down,  the  door  that  had  released  him. 
During  these  motions  he  had  the  sense  of  his  compan 
ion,  still  radiant  and  splendid,  but  somehow  momentar 
ily  suppressed,  suspended,  silvered  over  and  celestially 
blurred,  even  as  a  summer  moon  by  the  loose  veil  of  a 
cloud.  So  it  was  he  saw  her  while  he  leaned  for  fare 
well  on  the  open  window-ledge;  he  took  her  in  as  her 
visible  intensity  of  bright  vagueness  filled  the  circle 
that  the  interior  of  the  car  made  for  her.  It  was  such 
a  state  as  she  would  have  been  reduced  to — he  felt  this, 
was  certain  of  it — for  the  first  time  in  her  life;  and  it 

42 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

was  he,  poor  John  Berridge,  after  all,  who  would  have 
created  the  condition. 

"Good-night,  Princess.     I  sha'n't  see  you  again." 

Vague  was  indeed  no  word  for  it — shine  though  she 
might,  in  her  screened  narrow  niche,  as  with  the  lique 
faction  of  her  pearls,  the  glimmer  of  her  tears,  the 
freshness  of  her  surprise.  "You  won't  come  in — 
when  you've  had  no  supper?" 

He  smiled  at  her  with  a  purpose  of  kindness  that 
could  never  in  his  life  have  been  greater;  and  at  first 
but  smiled  without  a  word.  He  presently  shook  his 
head,  however — doubtless  also  with  as  great  a  sadness. 
"I  seem  to  have  supped  to  my  fill,  Princess.  Thank 
you,  I  won't  come  in." 

It  drew  from  her,  while  she  looked  at  him,  a  long 
low  anxious  wail.  "And  you  won't  do  my  Preface?" 

"No,  Princess,  I  won't  do  your  Preface.  Nothing 
would  induce  me  to  say  a  word  in  print  about  you. 
I'm  in  fact  not  sure  I  shall  ever  mention  you  in  any 
manner  at  all  as  long  as  ever  I  live." 

He  had  felt  for  an  instant  as  if  he  were  speaking  to 
some  miraculously  humanised  idol,  all  sacred,  all  jew 
elled,  all  votively  hung  about,  but  made  mysterious, 
in  the  recess  of  its  shrine,  by  the  very  thickness  of 
the  accumulated  lustre.  And  "Then  you  don't  like 
me — ?"  was  the  marvellous  sound  from  the  image. 

"Princess,"  was  in  response  the  sound  of  the  wor 
shipper,  "Princess,  I  adore  you.  But  I'm  ashamed 
for  you." 

43 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"  Ashamed ?" 

"You  are  Romance — as  everything,  and  by  what  I 
make  out  every  one,  about  you  is;  so  what  more  do  you 
want?  Your  Preface — the  only  one  worth  speaking 
of — was  written  long  ages  ago  by  the  most  beautiful 
imagination  of  man." 

Humanised  at  least  for  these  moments,  she  could 
understand  enough  to  declare  that  she  didn't.  "I 
don't,  I  don't!" 

"You  don't  need  to  understand.  Don't  attempt 
such  base  things.  Leave  those  to  us.  Only  live. 
Only  be.  We'll  do  the  rest." 

She  moved  over — she  had  come  close  to  the  window. 
"Ah,  but  Mr.  Berridge !" 

He  raised  both  hands; 'he  shook  them  at  her  gently, 
in  deep  and  soft  deprecation.  "  Don't  sound  my  dreadful 
name.  Fortunately,  however,  you  can't  help  yourself." 

"Ah,  voyons  !    I  so  want !" 

He  repeated  his  gesture,  and  when  he  brought  down 
his  hands  they  closed  together  on  both  of  hers,  which 
now  quite  convulsively  grasped  the  window-ledge. 
"Don't  speak,  because  when  you  speak  you  really 
say  things — !"  You  are  Romance,"  he  pronounced 
afresh  and  with  the  last  intensity  of  conviction  and 
persuasion.  "That's  all  you  have  to  do  with  it,"  he 
continued  while  his  hands,  for  emphasis,  pressed  hard 
on  her  own. 

Their  faces,  in  this  way,  were  nearer  together  than 
ever,  but  with  the  effect  of  only  adding  to  the  vividness 

44 


"THE  VELVET  GLOVE" 

of  that  dire  non-intelligence  from  which,  all  perversely 
and  incalculably,  her  very  beauty  now  appeared  to 
gain  relief.  This  made  for  him  a  pang  and  almost  an 
anguish;  the  fear  of  her  saying  something  yet  again 
that  would  wretchedly  prove  how  little  he  moved  her 
perception.  So  his  eyes,  of  remonstrant,  of  suppliant 
intention,  met  hers  close,  at  the  same  time  that  these, 
so  far  from  shrinking,  but  with  their  quite  other  swim 
ming  plea  all  bedimmed  now,  seemed  almost  to  wash 
him  with  the  tears  of  her  failure.  He  soothed,  he 
stroked,  he  reassured  her  hands,  for  tender  conveyance 
of  his  meaning,  quite  as  she  had  just  before  dealt  with 
his  own  for  brave  demonstration  of  hers.  It  was  dur 
ing  these  instants  as  if  the  question  had  been  which  of 
them  could  most  candidly  and  fraternally  plead.  Full 
but  of  that  she  kept  it  up.  "Ah,  if  you'd  only  think, 

if  you'd  only  try !" 

He  couldn't  stand  it — she  was  capable  of  believing 
he  had  edged  away,  excusing  himself  and  trumping  up 
a  factitious  theory,  because  he  hadn't  the  wit,  hadn't 
the  hand,  to  knock  off  the  few  pleasant  pages  she  asked 
him  for  and  that  any  proper  Frenchman,  master  of 
the  metier ',  would  so  easily  and  gallantly  have  promised. 
Should  she  so  begin  to  commit  herself  he'd,  by  the 
immortal  gods,  anticipate  it  in  the  manner  most  admir 
ably  effective — in  fact  he'd  even  thus  make  her  further 
derogation  impossible.  Their  faces  were  so  close  that 
he  could  practise  any  rich  freedom — even  though  for 
an  instant,  while  the  back  of  the  chauffeur  guarded 

45 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

them  on  that  side  and  his  own  presented  breadth, 
amplified  by  his  loose  mantle,  filled  the  whole  window- 
space,  leaving  him  no  observation  from  any  quarter  to 
heed,  he  uttered,  in  a  deep-drawn  final  groan,  an  irre 
pressible  echo  of  his  pang  for  what  might  have  been, 
the  muffled  cry  of  his  insistence.  "You  are  Romance ! " 
— he  drove  it  intimately,  inordinately  home,  his  lips, 
for  a  long  moment,  sealing  it,  with  the  fullest  force  of 
authority,  on  her  own;  after  which,  as  he  broke  away 
and  the  car,  starting  again,  turned  powerfully  across 
the  pavement,  he  had  no  further  sound  from  her  than 
if,  all  divinely  indulgent  but  all  humanly  defeated,  she 
had  given  the  question  up,  falling  back  to  infinite 
wonder.  He  too  fell  back,  but  could  still  wave  his 
hat  for  her  as  she  passed  to  disappearance  in  the  great 
floridly  framed  aperture  whose  wings  at  once  came 
together  behind  her. 


MORA    MONTRAVERS 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 
I 

'TpHEY  were  such  extraordinary  people  to  have  been 
-*-  so  odiously  stricken  that  poor  Traffic  himself, 
always,  at  the  best — though  it  was  indeed  just  now  at 
the  worst — what  his  wife  called  horribly  philosophic, 
fairly  grimaced  back,  in  private,  at  so  flagrant  a  show 
of  the  famous,  the  provokedly  vicious,  "  irony,"  the 
thing  he  had  so  often  read  about  in  clever  stories,  with 
which  the  usually  candid  countenance  of  their  fate 
seemed  to  have  begun  of  a  sudden  to  bristle.  Ah,  that 
irony  of  fate  often  admired  by  him  as  a  phrase  and 
recognised  as  a  truth — so  that  if  he  himself  ever  wrote 
a  story  it  should  certainly  and  most  strikingly  be  about 
that — he  fairly  saw  it  leer  at  them  now,  could  quite 
positively  fancy  it  guilty  of  a  low  wink  at  them,  in  their 
trouble,  out  of  that  vast  visage  of  the  world  that  was 
made  up  for  them  of  the  separate  stony  stares  or  sym 
pathising  smirks  presented  by  the  circle  of  their  friends. 
When  he  could  get  away  from  Jane  he  would  pause 
in  his  worried  walk — about  the  house  or  the  garden, 
always,  since  he  could  now  seldom  leave  her  to  brood 
alone  for  longer  than  that — and,  while  he  shook  his 
keys  or  his  loose  coin  restlessly  and  helplessly  in  the 
pockets  into  which  his  hands  had  come  to  be  inveter- 

49 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

ately  and  foolishly  thrust,  suffer  his  own  familiar  face, 
or  the  chance  reflection  of  it  in  some  gloomy  glass,  to 
respond  distortedly  to  the  grim  and  monstrous  joke. 
He  moved  from  room  to  room — as  he  easily  could,  at 
present,  since  their  catastrophe;  for  when  he  thus 
sounded  the  depths  of  slumbering  mirrors  it  was  more 
than  ever  as  if  they  were  all  "spare"  rooms,  dreary 
and  unapplied,  and  as  if  Jane  and  he  were  quartered 
in  them,  even  year  after  year,  quite  as  on  some  dull 
interminable  visit. 

The  joke  was  at  all  events  in  its  having  befallen  them, 
him  and  his  admirable,  anxious,  conscientious  wife, 
who,  living  on  their  sufficient  means  in  their  discreet 
way,  liked,  respected,  and  even  perhaps  a  bit  envied, 
in  the  Wimbledon  world  (with  so  much  good  old  ma 
hogany  and  so  many  Bartolozzis,  to  say  nothing  of  their 
collection  of  a  dozen  family  miniatures)  to  have  to  pick 
up  again  as  best  they  could — which  was  the  way  Jane 
put  it — the  life  that  Miss  Montr  avers,  their  unspeak 
able  niece,  though  not,  absolutely  not  and  never,  as 
every  one  would  have  it,  their  adopted  daughter,  had 
smashed  into  smithereens  by  leaving  their  roof,  from 
one  day  to  the  other,  to  place  herself  immediately  under 
the  protection,  or  at  least  under  the  inspiration,  of  a 
little  painter-man  commonly  called  Puddick,  who  had 
no  pretensions  to  being  a  gentleman  and  had  given  her 
lessons.  If  she  had  acted,  unquestionably,  according 
to  her  remarkable  nature,  this  added  no  grace  to  the 
turn  of  the  wheel  of  their  fortune — which  was,  so 

50 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

deplorably,  that  any  fledgling  of  their  general  nest  (and 
Mora  was  but  gone  twenty-one  and  really  clever  with 
her  brush)  should  have  such  a  nature.  It  wasn't  that, 
since  her  coming  to  them  at  fifteen,  they  had  been  ever, 
between  themselves,  at  their  ease  about  her — glossed 
over  as  everything  had  somehow  come  to  be  by  the 
treacherous  fact  of  her  beauty.  She  had  been  such  a 
credit  to  them  that  way  that  if  it  hadn't  put  them,  as 
earnest  observers,  quite  off  their  guard,  the  dazzle  and 
charm  of  it  appeared  mostly  to  have  misled  their 
acquaintance.  That  was  the  worst  cruelty  for  them, 
that  with  such  a  personal  power  to  please  she  shouldn't, 
even  on  some  light  irregular  line,  have  flown,  as  might 
have  been  conceived,  higher.  These  things  were  dread 
ful,  were  even  grotesque,  to  say;  but  what  wasn't  so 
now — after  his  difficult,  his  critical,  his  distinctly  con 
clusive  and,  above  all,  as  he  secretly  appraised  it,  his 
unexpectedly  and  absurdly  interesting  interview  with 
Mr.  Puddick?  This  passage,  deplorably  belated  by 
Mora's  own  extraordinarily  artful  action,  had  but  just 
taken  place,  and  it  had  sent  him  back  to  Jane  saddled 
with  the  queerest  and  most  difficult  errand  of  his  life. 
He  hadn't,  however,  on  his  return,  at  once  sought 
her  in  the  drawing-room — though  her  plan  of  cam 
paign  had  been  that  they  should  fly  their  flag  as  high  as 
ever,  and,  changing  none  of  their  refined  habits,  sit  in 
that  bow-windowed  place  of  propriety,  even  as  in  a 
great  glazed  public  cage,  as  much  as  ever — he  had 
sneaked  away  again  to  tip-toe,  with  his  pensive  private 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

humour,  over  the  whole  field;  observing  in  her  society, 
for  the  most  part,  the  forms  of  black  despair  and  grim 
participation,  if  even  at  the  same  time  avoiding  incon 
siderate  grossness;  but  at  bottom,  since  his  moments 
with  Puddick,  almost  ready  to  take,  as  a  man  of  the 
world,  the  impartial,  the  detached,  in  fact — hang  it!— 
even  the  amused  view.  It  hadn't  as  yet  made  a  shade 
of  difference  in  his  tone  that  Mora  was  Jane's  niece, 
and  not  even  her  very  own,  but  only  the  child  of  her 
half-sister,  whose  original  union  with  Malcolm  Mon- 
travers  had  moreover  made  a  break  between  them  that 
had  waited  for  healing  till  after  the  ill-starred  husband's 
death  and  the  eve  of  that  of  the  perfectly  disillusioned 
wife;  but  in  these  slightly  rueful,  though  singularly 
remedial,  dips  into  thoughtful  solitude  he  had  begun 
at  last  to  treat  himself  to  luxuries  that  he  could  feel  he 
was  paying  for.  Mora  was,  accurately  speaking,  no 
sharer  of  his  blood,  and  he  absolutely  denied  her  the 
right  not  alone  socially  to  dishonour,  but,  beyond  a 
mere  ruffle  of  the  surface,  morally  to  discompose  him; 
mixed  with  which  rather  awkwardly,  not  to  say  per 
haps  a  bit  perversely,  was  the  sense  that  as  the  girl  was 
showing  up,  unmistakably,  for  one  of  the  most  curious 
of  "cases" — the  term  Puddick  himself  had  used  about 
her — she  wouldn't  be  unlikely  to  reward  some  inde 
pendent,  some  intelligent  notice. 

He  had  never  from  the  first,  to  do  himself — or  to  do 
her — justice,  felt  he  had  really  known  her,  small,  cool, 
supposedly  childish,  yet  not  a  bit  confiding,  verily  not 

52 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

a  bit  appealing,  presence  as  she  was;  but  clearly  he 
should  know  her  now,  and  to  do  so  might  prove  indeed 
a  job.  Not  that  he  wanted  to  be  too  cold-blooded  about 
her — that  is  in  the  way  of  enlightened  appreciation, 
the  detachment  of  the  simply  scandalised  state  being 
another  matter;  for  this  was  somehow  to  leave  poor 
Jane,  and  poor  Jane's  gloom  of  misery,  in  the  lurch. 
But  once  safely  back  from  the  studio,  Puddick's  own 
— where  he  hadn't  been  sure,  upon  his  honour,  that 
some  coarse  danger  mightn't  crop  up — he  indulged  in 
a  surreptitious  vow  that  if  any  "fun,"  whether  just 
freely  or  else  more  or  less  acutely  speaking,  was  to 
come  of  the  matter,  he'd  be  blamed  if  he'd  be  wholly 
deprived  of  it.  The  possibility  of  an  incalculable  sort 
of  interest — in  fact,  quite  a  refined  sort,  could  there  be 
refinement  in  such  doings — had  somehow  come  out 
with  Puddick's  at  once  saying:  "Certainly  sir,  I'll 
marry  her  if  you  and  Mrs.  TrafHe  absolutely  insist — 
and  if  Mora  herself  (the  great  point!)  can  be  brought 
round  to  look  at  it  in  that  way.  But  I  warn  you  that 
if  I  do,  and  that  if  she  makes  that  concession,  I  shall 
probably  lose  my  hold  of  her — which  won't  be  best, 
you  know,  for  any  one  concerned.  You  don't  suppose 
I  don't  want  to  make  it  all  right,  do  you?"  the  surpris 
ing  young  man  had  gone  on.  "The  question's  only  of 
what  is  right — or  what  will  be  if  we  keep  our  heads  and 
take  time — with  such  an  extraordinary  person  as  Mora, 
don't  you  see?  to  deal  with.  You  must  grant  me," 
Mr.  Puddick  had  wound  up,  "that  she's  a  rum  case." 

53 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

II 

WHAT  he  had  first  felt,  of  course,  was  the  rare  cool 
ness  of  it,  the  almost  impudent  absence  of  any  tone  of 
responsibility;  which  had  begun  by  seeming  to  make 
the  little  painter-man's  own  case  as  "rum,"  surely,  as 
one  could  imagine  it.  He  had  gone,  poor  troubled 
Traffic,  after  the  talk,  straight  to  his  own  studio,  or  to 
the  rather  chill  and  vague,  if  scrupulously  neat,  pavilion 
at  the  garden-end,  which  he  had  put  up  eight  years 
ago  in  the  modest  hope  that  it  would  increasingly 
inspire  him;  since  it  wasn't  making  preparations  and 
invoking  facilities  that  constituted  swagger,  but,  much 
rather,  behaving  as  if  one's  powers  could  boldly  dis 
pense  with  them.  He  was  certain  Jane  would  come 
to  him  there  on  hearing  of  him  from  the  parlour-maid, 
to  whom  he  had  said  a  word  in  the  hall.  He  wasn't 
afraid — no — of  having  to  speak  a  little  as  he  felt;  but, 
though  well  aware  of  his  wife's  impatience,  he  wasn't 
keen,  either,  for  any  added  intensity  of  effort  to  abound 
only  in  Mrs.  Traffic's  sense.  He  required  space  and 
margin,  he  required  a  few  minutes'  time,  to  say  to  him 
self  frankly  that  this  dear  dismal  lady  had  no  sense — 
none  at  least  of  their  present  wretched  question — that 
was  at  all  worth  developing:  since  he  of  course  couldn't 
possibly  remark  it  to  poor  Jane.  He  had  perhaps 
never  remarked  for  his  own  private  benefit  so  many 
strange  things  as  between  the  moment  of  his  letting 
himself  again  into  the  perpetually  swept  and  garnished 

54 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

temple  of  his  own  perfunctory  aesthetic  rites,  where 
everything  was  ready  to  his  hand  and  only  that  weak 
tool  hung  up,  and  his  glimpse  of  Jane,  from  the  smaller 
window,  as  she  came  down  the  garden  walk.  Pud- 
dick's  studio  had  been  distinctly  dirty,  and  Puddick 
himself,  from  head  to  foot,  despite  his  fine  pale  little 
face  and  bright,  direct,  much  more  searching  than 
shifting  eyes,  almost  as  spotty  as  the  large  morsel  of 
rag  with  which  he  had  so  oddly  begun  to  rub  his  fin 
gers  while  standing  there  to  receive  Mora's  nearest 
male  relative;  but  the  canvas  on  his  easel,  the  thing 
that  even  in  the  thick  of  his  other  adventure  was  mak 
ing  so  straight  a  push  for  the  Academy,  almost  embar 
rassed  that  relative's  eyes,  not  to  say  that  relative's 
conscience,  by  the  cleanness  of  its  appeal.  Traffic 
hadn't  come  to  admire  his  picture  or  to  mark  how  he 
didn't  muddle  where  not  muddling  was  vital;  he  had 
come  to  denounce  his  conduct,  and  yet  now,  perhaps 
most  of  all,  felt  the  strain  of  having  pretended  so  to 
ignore  what  would  intensely  have  interested  him. 
Thanks  to  this  barren  artifice,  to  the  after-effect  of  it 
on  his  nerves,  his  own  preposterous  place,  all  polish 
and  poverty,  pointed  such  a  moral  as  he  had  never 
before  dreamed  of.  Spotless  it  might  be,  unlike  any 
surface  or  aspect  presented  under  the  high  hard  Pud 
dick  north-light,  since  it  showed  no  recording  trace, 
no  homely  smear — since  it  had  had  no  hour  of  history. 
That  was  the  way  truth  showed  and  history  came  out 
— in  spots:  by  them,  and  by  nothing  else,  you  knew  the 

55 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

real,  as  you  knew  the  leopard,  so  that  the  living  creature 
and  the  living  life  equally  had  to  have  them.  Stuffed 
animals  and  weeping  women  were — well,  another  ques 
tion.  He  had  gathered,  on  the  scene  of  his  late  effort, 
that  Mora  didn't  weep,  that  she  was  still  perfectly 
pleased  with  her  shocking  course;  her  complacency 
indeed  remained  at  such  a  pitch  as  to  make  any  ques 
tion  of  her  actual  approach,  on  whatever  basis,  or  any 
rash  direct  challenge  of  her,  as  yet  unadvisable.  He 
was  at  all  events,  after  another  moment,  in  presence  of 
Jane's  damp  severity;  she  never  ceased  crying,  but  her 
tears  froze  as  they  fell — though  not,  unfortunately,  to 
firm  ice,  any  surface  that  would  bear  the  weight  of 
large  argument.  The  only  thing  for  him,  none  the 
less,  was  to  carry  the  position  with  a  rush,  and  he  came 
at  once  to  the  worst. 

"He'll  do  it — he's  willing;  but  he  makes  a  moSt 
striking  point — I  mean  given  the  girl  as  we  know  her 
and  as  he  of  course  by  this  time  must.  He  keeps  his 
advantage,  he  thinks,  by  not  forcing  the  note — don't 
you  see?"  Traffic  himself — under  the  quick  glow  of 
his  rush — actually  saw  more  and  more.  "He's  feel 
ing  his  way — he  used  that  expression  to  me;  and  again 
I  haven't  to  tell  you,  any  more  than  he  really  had  to 
tell  me,  that  with  Mora  one  has  to  sit  tight.  He  puts 
on  us,  in  short,  the  responsibility." 

He  had  felt  how  more  than  ever  her  "done"  yellow 
hair — done  only  in  the  sense  of  an  elaborately  unbe 
coming  conformity  to  the  spasmodic  prescriptions, 

56 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

undulations  and  inflations  of  the  day,  not  in  that  of 
any  departure  from  its  pale  straw-coloured  truth — 
was  helped  by  her  white  invalidical  shawl  to  intensify 
those  reminders  of  their  thin  ideals,  their  bloodless 
immunity,  their  generally  compromised  and  missed  and 
forfeited  frankness,  that  every  other  feature  of  their 
domestic  scene  had  just  been  projecting  for  him.  "  Re 
sponsibility — we  responsible?"  She  gaped  with  the 
wonder  of  it. 

"I  mean  that  we  should  be  if  anything  were  to  hap 
pen  by  our  trying  to  impose  on  her  our  view  of  her  one 
redemption.  I  give  it  you  for  his  own  suggestion — 
and  thereby  worth  thinking  of." 

But  Jane  could  take  nothing  in.  "He  suggests  that 
he  needn't  marry  her,  and  you  agree  with  him?  Pray 
what  is  there  left  to  l  happen,' "  she  went  on  before  he 
could  answer,  "after  her  having  happened  so  com 
pletely  to  disgrace  herself?" 

He  turned  his  back  a  moment — he  had  shortly  be 
fore  noticed  a  framed  decoration,  a  "refined"  Japanese 
thing  that  gave  accent,  as  he  would  have  said,  to  the 
neatness  of  his  mouse-grey  wall,  and  that  needed 
straightening.  Those  spare  apprehensions  had  some 
how,  it  was  true,  suddenly  been  elbowed  out  of  his 
path  by  richer  ones;  but  he  obeyed  his  old  habit.  "  She 
can  leave  him,  my  dear;  that's  what  she  can  do — and 
not,  you  may  well  believe,  to  come  back  to  us." 

"If  she  will  come  I'll  take  her — even  now,"  said 
Jane  Traffic;  "  and  who  can  ask  of  me  more  than  that  ?" 

57 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  slid  about  a  little,  sportively,  on  his  polished 
floor,  as  if  he  would  have  liked  to  skate,  while  he 
vaguely,  inaudibly  hummed.  "Our  difficulty  is  that 
she  doesn't  ask  the  first  blessed  thing  of  us.  We've 
been,  you  see,  too  stupid  about  her.  Puddick  doesn't 
say  it,  but  he  knows  it — that  I  felt.  She  feels  what 
she  is — and  so  does  he." 

"What  she  is?  She's  an  awful  little  person" — and 
Mrs.  Traffic  stated  it  with  a  cold  finality  she  had  never 
yet  used. 

"Well  then,  that's  what  she  feels! — even  though 
it's  probably  not  the  name  she  employs  in  connection 
with  it.  She  has  tremendously  the  sense  of  life." 

"That's  bad,"  cried  Jane,  "when  you  haven't — 
not  even  feebly! — the  sense  of  decency." 

"How  do  you  know,  my  dear,"  he  returned,  "when 
you've  never  had  it?"  And  then  as  she  but  stared, 
since  he  couldn't  mean  she  hadn't  the  sense  of  decency, 
he  went  on,  really  quite  amazed  at  himself:  "People 
must  have  both  if  possible,  but  if  they  can  only  have 
one  I'm  not  sure  that  that  one,  as  we've  had  it — not 
at  all  'feebly,'  as  you  say! — is  the  better  of  the  two. 
What  do  we  know  about  the  sense  of  life — when  it 
breaks  out  with  real  freedom?  It  has  never  broken 
out  here,  my  dear,  for  long  enough  to  leave  its  breath 
on  the  window-pane.  But  they've  got  it  strong  down 
there  in  Puddick's  studio." 

She  looked  at  him  as  if  she  didn't  even  understand 
his  language,  and  she  flopped  thereby  into  the  trap 

53 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

set  for  her  by  a  single  word.  "Is  she  living  in  the 
studio?" 

He  didn't  avoid  her  eyes.  "  I  don't  know  where  she's 
living." 

"And  do  I  understand  that  you  didn't  ask  him?" 

"It  was  none  of  my  business — I  felt  that  there  in  an 
unexpected  way;  I  couldn't  somehow  not  feel  it — and 
I  suggest,  my  dear,  accordingly,  that  it's  also  none  of 
yours.  I  wouldn't  answer,  if  you  really  want  to 
know,"  he  wound  up,  hanging  fire  an  instant,  but 
candidly  bringing  it  out — "I  wouldn't  answer,  if  you 
really  want  to  know,  for  their  relations." 

Jane's  eyebrows  mounted  and  mounted.  "Who 
ever  in  the  world  would?" 

He  waited  a  minute,  looking  off  at  his  balanced 
picture — though  not  as  if  now  really  seeing  it.  "I'm 
not  talking  of  what  the  vulgar  would  say — or  are  saying, 
of  course,  to  their  fill.  I'm  not  talking  of  what  those 
relations  may  be.  I'm  talking — well,"  he  said,  "of 
what  they  mayn't." 

"You  mean  they  may  be  innocent?" 

"I  think  it  possible.  They're,  as  he  calls  it,  a  'rum' 
pair.  They're  not  like  us." 

"If  we're  not  like  them,"  she  broke  in,  "I  grant 
you  I  hope  not." 

"We've  no  imagination,  you  see,"  he  quietly  ex 
plained — "whereas  they  have  it  on  tap,  for  the  sort 
of  life  they  lead  down  there,  all  the  while."  He 
seemed  wistfully  to  figure  it  out.  "For  us  only  one 

59 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

kind  of  irregularity  is  possible — for  them,  no  doubt, 
twenty  kinds." 

Poor  Jane  listened  this  time — and  so  intently  that 
after  he  had  spoken  she  still  rendered  his  obscure  sense 
the  tribute  of  a  wait.  "You  think  it's  possible  she's 
not  living  with  him?" 

"I  think  anything  possible." 

"Then  what  in  the  world  did  she  want?" 

"She  wanted  in  the  first  place  to  get  away  from  us. 
We  didn't  like  her " 

"Ah,  we  never  let  her  see  it!" — Jane  could  trium 
phantly  make  that  point. 

It  but  had  for  him,  however,  an  effect  of  uncon 
scious  comedy.  "No,  that  was  it — and  she  wanted  to 
get  away  from  everything  we  did  to  prevent  her;  from 
our  solemn  precautions  against  her  seeing  it.  We 
didn't  understand  her,  or  we  should  have  understood 
how  much  she  must  have  wanted  to.  We  were  afraid 
of  her  in  short,  and  she  wanted  not  to  see  our  contor 
tions  over  it.  Puddick  isn't  beautiful — though  he  has 
a  fine  little  head  and  a  face  with  some  awfully  good 
marks;  but  he's  a  Greek  god,  for  statuesque  calm,  com 
pared  with  us.  He  isn't  afraid  of  her." 

Jane  drew  herself  elegantly  up.  "I  understood  you 
just  now  that  it's  exactly  what  he  is  /" 

Traffic  reflected.  "That's  only  for  his  having  to 
deal  with  her  in  our  way.  Not  if  he  handles  her  in 
his  own." 

"And  what,  pray,  is  his  own?" 
60 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

Traffic,  his  hands  in  his  pockets,  resumed  his  walk, 
touching  with  the  points  of  his  shoes  certain  separa 
tions  between  the  highly-polished  planks  of  his  floor. 
"Well,  why  should  we  have  to  know?" 

"Do  you  mean  we're  to  wash  our  hands  of  her?" 

He  only  circulated  at  first — but  quite  sounding  a 
low  whistle  of  exhilaration.  He  felt  happier  than  for 
a  long  time;  broken  as  at  a  blow  was  the  formation  of 
ice  that  had  somehow  covered,  all  his  days,  the  whole 
ground  of  life,  what  he  would  have  called  the  things 
under.  There  they  were,  the  things  under.  He  could 
see  them  now;  which  was  practically  what  he  after  a 
little  replied.  "It  will  be  so  interesting."  He  pulled 
up,  none  the  less,  as  he  turned,  before  her  poor  scared 
and  mottled  face,  her  still  suffused  eyes,  her  "dressed" 
head  parading  above  these  miseries. 

She  vaguely  panted,  as  from  a  dance  through  bush 
and  briar.  "But  what,  Sidney,  will  be?" 

"To  see  what  becomes  of  her.  Without  our  mud 
dling."  Which  was  a  term,  however,  that  she  so  pro 
tested  against  his  use  of  that  he  had  on  the  spot,  with 
more  kindness  than  logic,  to  attenuate,  admitting  her 
right  to  ask  him  who  could  do  less — less  than  take  the 
stand  she  proposed;  though  indeed  coming  back  to  the 
matter  that  evening  after  dinner  (they  never  really  got 
away  from  it;  but  they  had  the  consciousness  now  of 
false  starts  in  other  directions,  followed  by  the  captive 
returns  that  were  almost  as  ominous  of  what  might 
still  be  before  them  as  the  famous  tragic  rentree  of 

61 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

Louis  XVI  and  Marie  Antoinette  from  Varennes) ;  when 
he  brought  up,  for  their  common  relief,  the  essential 
fact  of  the  young  woman's  history  as  they  had  suffered 
it  to  shape  itself:  her  coming  to  them  bereft  and  home 
less,  addressed,  packed  and  registered  after  the  fashion 
of  a  postal  packet;  their  natural  flutter  of  dismay  and 
apprehension,  but  their  patient  acceptance  of  the 
charge;  the  five  flurried  governesses  she  had  had  in 
three  years,  who  had  so  bored  her  and  wnom  she  had 
so  deeply  disconcerted;  the  remarkable  disposition  for 
drawing  and  daubing  that  she  had  shown  from  the  first 
and  that  had  led  them  to  consent  to  her  haunting  of  a 
class  in  town,  that  had  made  her  acquainted  with  the 
as  yet  wholly  undistinguished  young  artist,  Walter 
Puddick,  who,  with  a  couple  of  other  keen  and  juvenile 
adventurers  of  the  brush,  "criticised,"  all  at  their  ease> 
according  to  the  queer  new  licence  of  the  day,  and  with 
nobody  to  criticise  them,  eighty  supposed  daughters  of 
gentlemen;  the  uncontrolled  spread  of  her  social  con 
nection  in  London,  on  the  oddest  lines,  as  a  proof  of 
this  prosecution  of  her  studies;  her  consequent  pro 
longed  absences,  her  strange  explanations  and  deeper 
duplicities,  and  presently  her  bolder  defiances;  with 
her  staying  altogether,  at  last,  one  fine  day,  under  pre 
text  of  a  visit  at  Highgate,  and  writing  them  at  the  end 
of  a  week,  during  which  they  had  been  without  news 
of  her,  that  her  visit  was  to  Mr.  Puddick  and  his  "set," 
and  was  likely  to  be  of  long  duration,  as  he  was  "look 
ing  after  her,"  and  there  were  plenty  of  people  in  the 

62 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

set  to  help,  and  as  she,  above  all,  wanted  nothing  more : 
nothing  more,  of  course,  than  her  two  hundred  and 
seventy  a  year,  the  scant  remainder  of  her  mother's 
fortune  that  she  had  come  into  the  use  of,  under  that 
battered  lady's  will,  on  her  eighteenth  birthday,  and 
through  which  her  admirers,  every  member  of  the  set, 
no  doubt,  wouldn't  have  found  her  least  admirable. 
Puddick  wouldn't  be  paying  for  her,  by  the  blessing  of 
heaven — thatj  Traffic  recognised,  would  have  been 
ground  for  anything;  the  case  rather  must  be  the  other 
way  round.  She  was  "treating"  the  set,  probably, 
root  and  branch — magnificently;  so  no  wonder  she 
was  having  success  and  liking  it.  Didn't  Jane  recog 
nise,  therefore,  how  in  the  light  of  this  fact  almost  any 
droll  different  situation — different  from  the  common 
and  less  edifying  turn  of  such  affairs — might  here 
prevail?  He  could  imagine  even  a  fantastic  delicacy; 
not  on  the  part  of  the  set  at  large  perhaps,  but  on  that 
of  a  member  or  two. 

What  Jane  most  promptly  recognised,  she  showed 
him  in  answer  to  this,  was  that,  with  the  tone  he  had 
so  extraordinarily  begun  to  take  on  the  subject,  his 
choice  of  terms  left  her  staring.  Their  ordeal  would 
have  to  be  different  indeed  from  anything  she  had  yet 
felt  it  for  it  to  affect  her  as  droll,  and  Mora's  behaviour 
to  repudiate  at  every  point  and  in  some  scarce  conceiv 
able  way  its  present  appearance  for  it  to  strike  her  either 
as  delicate  or  as  a  possible  cause  of  delicacy.  In  fact  she 
could  have  but  her  own  way — Mora  was  a  monster. 

63 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

• 

"Well,"  he  laughed — quite  brazen  about  it  now— 
"if  she  is  it's  because  she  has*  paid  for  it!  Why  the 
deuce  did  her  stars,  unles^'to  niake  her  worship  gods 
entirely  other  than  Jane  Traffic's,  rig  her  out  with  a 
name  that  puts  such  a^  premmjn  on'  adventures? 
'Mora  Montravers' — it  paints  the  whole  career  for 
you.  She  is,  one  does  feel,  her  name;  but  how  couldn't 
she  be?  She'd  dishonour  it  and  its  grand  air  if  she 
weren't." 

"Then  by  that  reasoning  you  admit,"  Mrs.  Traffic 
returned  with  more  of  an  argumentative  pounce  than 
she  had  perhaps  ever  achieved  in  her  life,  "that  she  is 
misconducting  herself." 

It  pulled  him  up  but  ten  seconds.  "It  isn't,  love, 
that  she's  misconducting  herself — it's  that  she's  con 
ducting,  positively,  and  by  her  own  lights  doubtless 
quite  responsibly,  Miss  Montravers  through  the  pre- 
appointed  circle  of  that  young  lady's  experience." 
Jane  turned  on  this  a  desolate  back;  but  he  only  went 
on.  "It  would  have  been  better  for  us  perhaps  if 
she  could  have  been  a  Traffic — but,  failing  that,  I 
think  I  should,  on  the  ground  that  sinning  at  all  one 
should  sin  boldly,  have  elected  for  Montravers  out 
right.  That  does  the  thing — it  gives  the  unmistakable 
note.  And  if  'Montravers'  made  it  probable  'Mora' 
— don't  you  see,  dearest? — made  it  sure.  Would  you 
wish  her  to  change  to  Puddick?"  This  brought  her 
round  again,  but  as  the  affirmative  hadn't  quite  leaped 
to  her  lips  he  found  time  to  continue.  "Unless  indeed 

64 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

they  can  make  some  arrangement  by  which  he  takes 
her  name.     Perhaps  we  can  work  it  that  way!" 

His  suggestion  was  thrown  out  as  for  its  positive 
charm;  but  Jane  stood  now,  to  do  her  justice,  as  a  rock. 
"  She's  doing  something  that,  surely,  no  girl  in  the  world 
ever  did  before — in  preferring,  as  I  so  strangely  under 
stand  you,  that  her  lover  shouldn't  make  her  the  ob 
vious  reparation.  But  is  her  reason  her  dislike  of  his 
vulgar  name?" 

"That  has  no  weight  for  you,  Jane?"  Traffic  asked 
in  reply. 

Jane  dismally  shook  her  head.  "Who,  indeed,  as 
you  say,  are  we?  Her  reason — if  it  is  her  reason — is 
vulgarer  still." 

He  didn't  believe  it  could  be  Mora's  reason,  and 
though  he  had  made,  under  the  impression  of  the 
morning,  a  brave  fight,  he  had  after  reflection  to  allow 
still  for  much  obscurity  in  their  question.  But  he  had 
none  the  less  retained  his  belief  in  the  visibly  uncom 
mon  young  man,  and  took  occasion  to  make  of  his  wife 
an  inquiry  that  hadn't  hitherto  come  up  in  so  straight 
a  form  and  that  sounded  of  a  sudden  rather  odd. 
"  Are  you  at  all  attached  to  her  ?  Can  you  give  me  your 
word  for  that?" 

She  faced  him  again  like  a  waning  wintry  moon. 
"Attached  to  Mora?  Why  she's  my  sister's  child." 

"Ah  that,  my  dear,  is  no  answer!  Can  you  assure 
me  on  your  honour  that  you're  conscious  of  anything 
you  can  cajl  real  affection  for  her?" 

65 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

Jane  blankly  brooded.  "What  has  that  to  do  with 
it?" 

"I  think  it  has  everything.  If  we  don't  feel  a  ten 
derness." 

"  You  certainly  strike  me  as  feeling  one!"  Mrs.  Traf- 
fle  sarcastically  cried. 

He  weighed  it,  but  to  the  effect  of  his  protesting. 
"No,  not  enough  for  me  to  demand  of  her  to  marry  to 
spare  my  sensibility." 

His  wife  continued  to  gloom.  "What  is  there  in  what 
she  has  done  to  make  us  tender?" 

"Let  us  admit  then,  if  there's  nothing,  that  it  has 
made  us  tough!  Only  then  we  must  be  tough.  If 
we're  having  the  strain  and  the  pain  of  it  let  us  also 
have  the  relief  and  the  fun." 

"Oh  the  cfun'!"  Jane  wailed;  but  adding  soon  after: 
"If  she'll  marry  him  I'll  forgive  her." 

"Ah,  that's  not  enough!"  he  pronounced  as  they 
went  to  bed. 

Ill 

YET  he  was  to  feei  too  the  length  that  even  forgiving 
her  would  have  to  go — for  Jane  at  least — when,  a 
couple  of  days  later,  they  both,  from  the  drawing-room 
window,  saw,  to  their  liveliest  astonishment,  the  girl 
alight  at  the  gate.  She  had  taken  a  fly  from  the  sta 
tion,  and  their  attention  caught  her  as  she  paused 
apparently  to  treat  with  the  cabman  of  the  question  of 
his  waiting  for  her  or  coming  back.  It  seemed  settled 

66 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

in  a  moment  that  he  should  wait;  he  didn't  remount  his 
box,  and  she  came  in  and  up  the  garden-path.  Jane 
had  already  flushed,  and  with  violence,  at  the  appari 
tion,  and  in  reply  to  her  companion's  instant  question 
had  said:  "Yes,  I'll  see  her  if  she  has  come  back." 

"Well,  she  has  come  back." 

"She's  keeping  her  cab — she  hasn't  come  to  stay." 
Mrs.  Traffic  had  gained  a  far  door  of  retreat. 

"You  won't  speak  to  her?" 

"Only  if  she  has  come  to  stay.     Then — volumes!" 

He  had  remained  near  the  window,  held  fast  there 
by  the  weight  of  indefinite  obligation  that  his  wife's 
flight  from  the  field  shifted  to  his  shoulders.  "But  if 
she  comes  back  to  stay  what  can  Puddick  do?" 

This  kept  her  an  instant.  "To  stay  till  he  marries 
her  is  what  I  mean." 

"Then  if  she  asks  for  you — as  she  only  must — am 
I  to  tell  her  that?" 

Flushed  and  exalted,  her  hand  on  the  door,  Jane 
had  for  this  question  a  really  grand  moment.  "Tell 
her  that  if  he  will  she  shall  come  in — with  your  assent 
— for  my  four  hundred." 

"Oh,  oh!"  he  ambiguously  sounded  while  she 
whisked  away  and  the  door  from  the  hall  was  at  the 
same  time  thrown  open  by  the  parlour- maid.  "Miss 
Montravers!"  announced,  with  a  shake  of  anguish, 
that  domestic,  whose  heightened  colour  and  scared 
eyes  conformed  to  her  mistress's  example.  Traffic 
felt  his  own  cheek,  for  that  matter,  unnaturally  glow, 

6? 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

and  the  very  first  of  his  observations  as  Mora  was 
restored  to  his  sight  might  have  been  that  she  alone  of 
them  all  wore  her  complexion  with  no  difference. 
There  was  little  doubt  moreover  that  this  charming 
balance  of  white  and  pink  couldn't  have  altered  but 
to  its  loss;  and  indeed  when  they  were  left  alone  the 
whole  immediate  effect  for  him  of  the  girl's  standing 
there  in  immediate  bright  silence  was  that  of  her  hav 
ing  come  simply  to  reaffirm  her  extraordinary  pretti- 
ness.  It  might  have  been  just  to  say:  "  You've  thought, 
and  you  think,  all  sorts  of  horrible  things  about  me, 
but  observe  how  little  my  appearance  matches  them, 
and  in  fact  keep  up  coarse  views  if  you  can  in  the  light 
of  my  loveliness."  Yet  it  wasn't  as  if  she  had  changed, 
either,  even  to  the  extent  of  that  sharper  emphasis: 
he  afterward  reflected,  as  he  lived  over  this  passage, 
that  he  must  have  taken  for  granted  in  her,  with  the 
life  she  was  leading,  so  to  call  it,  some  visibility  of 
boldness,  some  significant  surface — of  which  absurd 
supposition  her  presence,  at  the  end  of  three  minutes, 
had  disabused  him  to  the  point  of  making  all  the  awk 
wardness  his  and  leaving  none  at  all  for  her.  That 
was  a  side  of  things,  the  awkward,  that  she  clearly 
meant  never  again  to  recognise  in  conversation — 
though  certainly  from  the  first,  ever,  she  had  brushed 
it  by  lightly  enough.  She  was  in  truth  exactly  the 
same — except  for  her  hint  that  they  might  have  for 
gotten  how  pretty  she  could  be;  and  he  further  made 
sure  she  would  incur  neither  pains  nor  costs  for  any 

68 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

new  attempt  on  them.  The  Mora  they  had  always 
taken  her  for  would  serve  her  perfectly  still;  that  young 
woman  was  bad  enough,  in  all  conscience,  to  hang 
together  through  anything  that  might  yet  happen. 

So  much  he  was  to  feel  she  had  conveyed,  and  that 
it  was  the  little  person  presenting  herself,  at  her  con 
venience,  on  these  terms  who  had  been  all  the  while, 
in  their  past,  their  portentous  inmate — since  what  had 
the  portent  been,  by  the  same  token,  but  exactly  of 
this?  By  the  end  of  three  minutes  more  our  friend's 
sole  thought  was  to  conceal  from  her  that  he  had  looked 
for  some  vulgar  sign — such  as,  reported  to  Wimbledon 
tea-tables,  could  be  confidentially  mumbled  about:  he 
was  almost  as  ashamed  of  that  elderly  innocence  as  if 
she  had  caught  him  in  the  fact  of  disappointment  at 
it.  Meanwhile  she  had  expressed  her  errand  very 
simply  and  serenely.  "I've  come  to  see  you  because 
I  don't  want  to  lose  sight  of  you — my  being  no  longer 
with  you  is  no  reason  for  that."  She  was  going  to 
ignore,  he  saw — and  she  would  put  it  through:  she  was 
going  to  ignore  everything  that  suited  her,  and  the 
quantity  might  become  prodigious.  Thus  it  would 
rest  upon  them,  poor  things,  to  disallow,  if  they  must, 
the  grace  of  these  negatives — in  which  process  she 
would  watch  them  flounder  without  help.  It  opened 
out  before  him — a  vertiginous  view  of  a  gulf;  the  abyss 
of  what  the  ignoring  would  include  for  the  convenient 
general  commerce;  of  what  might  lie  behind,  in  fine, 
should  the  policy  foreshadow  the  lurking  quantity. 

69 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  knew  the  vague  void  for  one  he  should  never  bridge, 
and  that  to  put  on  emphasis  where  Mora  chose  to  neglect 
it  would  be  work  only  for  those  who  "gathered  sam 
phire"  like  the  unfortunates  in  "King  Lear,"  or  those 
who,  by  profession,  planted  lightning-rods  at  the  tips 
of  tremendous  towers.  He  was  committed  to  pusil 
lanimity,  which  would  yet  have  to  figure  for  him,  before 
he  had  done  with  it,  he  knew,  as  a  gallant  independ 
ence,  by  letting  ten  minutes  go  without  mention  of 
Jane.  Mora  had  put  him  somehow  into  the  position 
of  having  to  explain  that  her  aunt  wouldn't  see  her— 
precisely  that  was  the  mark  of  the  girl's  attitude.  But 
he'd  be  hanged  if  he'd  do  anything  of  the  sort. 

It  was  therefore  like  giving  poor  Jane  basely  away, 
his  not,  to  any  tune,  speaking  for  her — and  all  the  more 
that  their  visitor  sat  just  long  enough  to  let  his  help 
lessness  grow  and  reach  perfection.  By  this  facility 
it  was  he  who  showed — and  for  her  amusement  and 
profit — all  the  change  she  kept  him  from  imputing  to 
herself.  He  presented  her — she  held  him  up  to  him 
self  as  presenting  her — with  a  new  uncle,  made  over, 
to  some  loss  of  dignity,  on  purpose  for  her;  and  nothing 
could  less  have  suited  their  theory  of  his  right  relation 
than  to  have  a  private  understanding  with  her  at  his 
wife's  expense.  However,  gracefully  grave  and  im 
perturbable,  inimitably  armed  by  her  charming  cor 
rectness,  as  she  sat  there,  it  would  be  her  line  in  life, 
he  was  certain,  to  reduce  many  theories,  solemn  Wim 
bledon  theories  about  the  scandalous  person,  to  the 

70 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

futility  of  so  much  broken  looking-glass.  Not  naming 
her  aunt — since  he  didn't — she  had  of  course  to  start, 
for  the  air  of  a  morning  call,  some  other  hare  or  two; 
she  asked  for  news  of  their  few  local  friends  quite  as 
if  these  good  people  mightn't  ruefully  have  "cut"  her, 
by  what  they  had  heard,  should  they  have  met  her  out 
on  the  road.  She  spoke  of  Mr.  Puddick  with  perfect 
complacency,  and  in  particular  held  poor  Traffic  very 
much  as  some  master's  fiddle-bow  might  have  made 
him  hang  on  the  semi-tone  of  a  silver  string  when  she 
referred  to  the  visit  he  had  paid  the  artist  and  to  the 
latter's  having  wondered  whether  he  liked  what  he  saw. 
She  liked,  more  and  more,  Mora  intimated,  what  was 
offered  to  her  own  view;  Puddick  was  going  to  do,  she 
was  sure,  such  brilliant  work — so  that  she  hoped  im 
mensely  he  would  come  again.  Traffic  found  him 
self,  yes — it  was  positive — staying  his  breath  for  this; 
there  was  in  fact  a  moment,  that  of  her  first  throwing 
off  her  free  "Puddick,"  when  it  wouldn't  have  taken 
much  more  to  make  him  almost  wish  that,  for  rounded 
perfection,  she'd  say  "Walter"  at  once.  He  would 
scarce  have  guaranteed  even  that  there  hadn't  been 
just  then  some  seconds  of  his  betraying  that  imagina 
tion  in  the  demoralised  eyes  that  her  straight,  clear, 
quiet  beams  sounded  and  sounded,  against  every  pre 
sumption  of  what  might  have  been.  What  essentially 
happened,  at  any  rate,  was  that  by  the  time  she  went 
she  had  not  only  settled  him  in  the  sinister  attitude  of 
having  lost  all  interest  in  her  aunt,  but  had  made  him 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

give  her  for  the  profane  reason  of  it  that  he  was  gaining 
so  much  in  herself. 

He  rushed  in  again,  for  that  matter,  to  a  frank  clear 
ance  the  moment  he  had  seen  the  girl  off  the  premises, 
attended  her,  that  is,  back  to  her  fly.  He  hadn't  at 
this  climax  remarked  to  her  that  she  must  come  again 
—which  might  have  meant  either  of  two  or  three  inco- 
herencies  and  have  signified  thereby  comparatively 
little;  he  had  only  fixed  on  her  a  rolling  eye — for  it 
rolled,  he  strangely  felt,  without  leaving  her;  which 
had  the  air  of  signifying  heaven  knew  what.  She  took 
it,  clearly,  during  the  moment  she  sat  there  before  her 
start,  for  the  most  rather  than  for  the  least  it  might 
mean;  which  again  made  him  gape  with  the  certitude 
that  ever  thereafter  she  would  make  him  seem  to  have 
meant  what  she  liked.  She  had  arrived  in  a  few  min 
utes  at  as  wondrous  a  recipe  or  as  quick  an  inspiration 
for  this  as  if  she  had  been  a  confectioner  using  some 
unprecedented  turn  of  the  ladle  for  some  supersubtle 
cream.  He  was  a  proved  conspirator  from  that  in 
stant  on,  which  was  practically  what  he  had  qualified 
Jane,  within  ten  minutes — if  Jane  had  only  been 
refreshingly  sharper — to  pronounce  him.  For  what  else 
in  the  world  did  it  come  to,  his  failure  of  ability  to 
attribute  any  other  fine  sense  to  Mora's  odd  "step" 
than  the  weird  design  of  just  giving  them  a  lead? 
They  were  to  leave  her  alone,  by  her  sharp  prescrip 
tion,  and  she  would  show  them  once  for  all  how  to  do 
it.  Cutting  her  dead  wasn't  leaving  her  alone,  any 

72 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

idiot  could  do  that;  conversing  with  her  affably  was  the 
privilege  she  offered,  and  the  one  he  had  so  effectually 
embraced — he  made  a  clean  breast  of  this — that  he 
had  breathed  to  her  no  syllable  of  the  message  left 
with  him  by  her  aunt. 

"Then  you  mean,"  this  lady  now  inquired,  "that 
I'm  to  go  and  call  upon  her,  at  that  impossible  place, 
just  as  if  she  were  the  pink  of  propriety  and  we  had  no 
exception  whatever  to  take  to  her  conduct  ?  Then  you 
mean,"  Mrs.  Traffic  had  pursued  with  a  gleam  in  her 
eye  of  more  dangerous  portent  than  any  he  had  ever 
known  himself  to  kindle  there — "then  you  mean  that 
I'm  to  grovel  before  a  chit  of  a  creature  on  whom  I've 
lavished  every  benefit,  and  to  whom  I've  actually 
offered  every  indulgence,  and  who  shows  herself,  in 
return  for  it  all,  by  what  I  make  out  from  your  rig 
marole,  a  fiend  of  insolence  as  well  as  of  vice?" 

The  danger  described  by  Sidney  Traffle  was  not 
that  of  any  further  act  of  violence  from  Jane  than  this 
freedom  of  address  to  him,  unprecedented  in  their  long 
intercourse — this  sustained  and,  as  he  had  in  a  degree 
to  allow,  not  unfounded  note  of  sarcasm;  such  a  resort 
to  which,  on  his  wife's  part,  would,  at  the  best,  mark 
the  prospect  for  him,  in  a  form  flushed  with  novelty, 
of  much  conscious  self-discipline.  What  looked  out  of 
her  dear  foolish  face,  very  much  with  the  effect  of  a 
new  and  strange  head  boldly  shown  at  an  old  and 
familiar  pacific  window,  was  just  the  assurance  that 
he  might  hope  for  no  abashed  sense  in  her  of  differing 

73 


THE   FINER  GRAIN 

from  him  on  all  this  ground  as  she  had  never  differed 
on  any.  It  was  as  if  now,  unmistakably,  she  liked  to 
differ,  the  ground  being  her  own  and  he  scarce  more 
than  an  unwarranted  poacher  there.  Of  course  it  was 
her  own,  by  the  fact,  first,  of  Mora's  being  her,  not  his, 
sister's  child;  and,  second,  by  all  the  force  with  which 
her  announced  munificence  made  it  so.  He  took  a 
moment  to  think  how  he  could  best  meet  her  challenge, 
and  then  reflected  that  there  was,  happily,  nothing 
like  the  truth — his  truth,  of  which  it  was  the  insidious 
nature  to  prevail.  "What  she  wanted,  I  make  out, 
was  but  to  give  us  the  best  pleasure  she  could  think  of. 
The  pleasure,  I  mean,  of  our  not  only  recognising  how 
little  we  need  worry  about  her,  but  of  our  seeing  as  well 
how  pleasant  it  may  become  for  us  to  keep  in  touch 
with  her." 

These  words,  he  was  well  aware,  left  his  wife — given 
her  painful  narrowness — a  bristling  quiver  of  retorts 
to  draw  from;  yet  it  was  not  without  a  silent  surprise 
that  he  saw  her,  with  her  irritated  eyes  on  him,  ex 
tract  the  bolt  of  finest  point.  He  had  rarely  known  her 
to  achieve  that  discrimination  before.  "The  pleasure 
then,  in  her  view,  you  'make  out' — since  you  make 
out  such  wonders! — is  to  be  all  for  us  only?" 

He  found  it  fortunately  given  him  still  to  smile. 
"That  will  depend,  dear,  on  our  appreciating  it  enough 
to  make  things  agreeable  to  her  in  order  to  get  it. 
But  as  she  didn't  inquire  for  you,"  he  hastened  to  add, 
"I  don't — no  I  don't — advise  your  going  to  see  her 

74 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

even  for  the  interest  I  speak  of!"     He  bethought  him 
self.     "We  must  wait  a  while." 

"Wait  till  she  gets  worse?" 

He  felt  after  a  little  that  he  should  be  able  now 
always  to  command  a  kindly  indulgent  tone.  "I'll  go 
and  see  her  if  you  like." 

"Why  in  the  world  should  I  like  it?  Is  it  your 
idea — for  the  pleasure  you  so  highly  appreciate,  and 
heaven  knows  what  you  mean  by  it! — to  cultivate  with 
her  a  free  relation  of  your  own?" 

"No" — he  promptly  returned — "I  suggest  it  only  as 
acting  for  you.  Unless,"  he  went  on,  "you  decidedly 
wish  to  act  altogether  for  yourself." 

For  some  moments  she  made  no  answer;  though  when 
she  at  last  spoke  it  was  as  if  it  were  an  answer.  "I 
shall  send  for  Mr.  Puddick." 

"And  whom  will  you  send?" 

"I  suppose  I'm  capable  of  a  note,"  Jane  re 
plied. 

"Yes,  or  you  might  even  telegraph.  But  are  you 
sure  he'll  come?" 

"Am  I  sure,  you  mean,"  she  asked,  "that  his 
companion  will  let  him  ?  I  can  but  try,  at  all 
events,  and  shall  at  any  rate  have  done  what  I 
can." 

"I  think  he's  afraid  of  her " 

Traffic  had  so  begun,  but  she  had  already  taken  him 
up.  "And  you're  not,  you  mean — and  that's  why 
you're  so  eager?" 

75 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"  Ah,  my  dear,  my  dear  ?  "  He  met  it  with  his  strained 
grimace.  "Let  us  by  all  means,"  he  also,  however, 
said,  "have  him  if  we  can." 

On  which  it  was,  for  a  little,  that  they  strangely 
faced  each  other.  She  let  his  accommodation  lie  while 
she  kept  her  eyes  on  him,  and  in  a  moment  she  had 
come  up,  as  it  were,  elsewhere.  "If  I  thought  you'd 
see  her !" 

"That  I'd  see  her?" — for  she  had  paused  again. 

"See  her  and  go  on  with  her — well,  without  my 
knowledge,"  quavered  poor  Jane,  "I  assure  you  you'd 
seem  to  me  even  worse  than  her.  So  will  you  promise 
me?"  she  ardently  added. 

"  Promise  you  what,  dear  ?"     He  spoke  quite  mildly. 

"Not  to  see  her  in  secret — which  I  believe  would 
kill  me." 

"Oh,  oh,  oh,  love!"  Traffic  smiled  while  she  posi 
tively  glared. 

IV 

THREE  days  having  elapsed,  however,  he  had  to  feel 
that  things  had  considerably  moved  on  his  being  privi 
leged  to  hear  his  wife,  in  the  drawing-room,  where 
they  entertained  Mr.  Puddick  at  tea,  put  the  great 
question  straighter  to  that  visitor  than  he  himself,  Sid 
ney  Traffic,  could  either  have  planned  or  presumed  to 
do.  Flushed  to  a  fever  after  they  had  beat  about  the 
bush  a  little,  Jane  didn't  flinch  from  her  duty.  "What 
I  want  to  know  in  plain  terms,  if  you  please,  is  whether 

76 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

or  no  you're  Mora's  lover?"  " Plain  terms" — she  did 
have  inspirations!  so  that  under  the  shock  he  turned 
away,  humming,  as  ever,  in  his  impatience,  and,  the 
others  being  seated  over  the  vain  pretence  of  the  after 
noon  repast,  left  the  young  man  to  say  what  he  might. 
It  was  a  fool's  question,  and  there  was  always  a  gape 
for  the  wisest  (the  greater  the  wisdom  and  the  greater 
the  folly)  in  any  apprehension  of  such.  As  if  he  were 
going  to  say,  remarkable  Puddick,  not  less  remarkable 
in  his  way  than  Mora — to  say,  that  is,  anything  that 
would  suit  Jane;  and  as  if  it  didn't  give  her  away  for  a 
goose  that  she  should  assume  he  was!  Traffic  had 
never  more  tiptoed  off  to  the  far  end  of  the  room, 
whether  for  pretence  of  a  sudden  interest  in  his  precious 
little  old  Copley  Fielding  or  on  any  other  extemporised 
ground,  than  while  their  guest  momentarily  hung  fire; 
but  though  he  winced  it  was  as  if  he  now  liked  to  wince 
— the  occasions  she  gave  him  for  doing  so  were  such  a 
sign  of  his  abdication.  He  had  wholly  stepped  aside, 
and  she  could  flounder  as  she  would:  he  had  found 
exactly  the  formula  that  saved  his  dignity,  that  ex 
pressed  his  sincerity,  and  that  yet  didn't  touch  his 
curiosity.  "I  see  it  would  be  indelicate  for  me  to  go 
further — yes,  love,  I  do  see  that:"  such  was  the  con 
cession  he  had  resorted  to  for  a  snap  of  the  particular 
tension  of  which  we  a  moment  ago  took  the  measure. 
This  had  entailed  Jane's  gravely  pronouncing  him,  for 
the  first  time  in  her  life,  ridiculous;  as  if,  in  common 
sense — !  She  used  that  term  also  with  much  freedom 

77 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

now;  at  the  same  time  that  it  hadn't  prevented  her 
almost  immediately  asking  him  if  he  would  mind  writ 
ing  her  letter.  Nothing  could  suit  him  more,  from  the 
moment  she  was  ostensibly  to  run  the  show — as  for 
her  benefit  he  promptly  phrased  ^  the  matter — than  that 
she  should  involve  herself  in  as  many  inconsistencies 
as  possible;  since  if  he  did  such  things  in  spite  of  his 
scruple  this  was  as  nothing  to  her  needing  him  at 
every  step  in  spite  of  her  predominance. 

His  delicacy  was  absurd  for  her  because  Mora's 
indecency  had  made  this,  by  her  logic,  the  only  air 
they  could  now  breathe;  yet  he  knew  how  it  neverthe 
less  took  his  presence  to  wind  her  up  to  her  actual 
challenge  of  their  guest.  Face  to  face  with  that  per 
sonage  alone  she  would  have  failed  of  the  assurance 
required  for  such  crudity;  deeply  unprepared  as  she 
really  was,  poor  dear,  for  the  crudity  to  which  she 
might,  as  a  consequence,  have  opened  the  gates.  She 
lived  altogether  thus — and  nothing,  to  her  husband's 
ironic  view,  he  flattered  himself,  could  be  droller — in 
perpetual  yearning,  deprecating,  in  bewildered  and 
muddled  communion  with  the  dreadful  law  of  crudity; 
as  if  in  very  truth,  to  his  amused  sense,  the  situation 
hadn't  of  necessity  to  be  dressed  up  to  the  eyes  for 
them  in  every  sort  of  precaution  and  paraphrase. 
Traffic  had  privately  reached  the  point  of  seeing  it,  at 
its  high  pitch  of  mystery  and  bravery,  absolutely  defy 
any  common  catchword.  The  one  his  wife  had  just 
employed  struck  him,  while  he  hunched  his  shoulders 

78 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

at  the  ominous  pause  she  had  made  inevitable  for 
sturdy  Puddick,  as  the  vulgarest,  and  he  had  time 
largely  to  blush  before  an  answer  came.  He  had 
written,  explicitly  on  Jane's  behalf,  to  request  the 
favour  of  an  interview,  but  had  been  careful  not  to 
intimate  that  it  was  to  put  that  artless  question.  To 
have  dragged  a  busy  person,  a  serious  person,  out  from 
town  on  the  implication  of  his  being  treated  for  reward 
to  so  bete  an  appeal — no,  one  surely  couldn't  appear 
to  have  been  concerned  in  that.  Puddick  had  been 
under  no  obligation  to  come — one  might  honestly  have 
doubted  whether  he  would  even  reply.  However,  his 
power  of  reply  proved  not  inconsiderable,  as  consorted 
with  his  having  presented  himself  not  a  bit  ruefully  or 
sulkily,  but  all  easily  and  coolly,  and  even  to  a  visible 
degree  in  a  spirit  of  unprejudiced  curiosity.  It  was 
as  if  he  had  practically  forgotten  Traffic's  own  inva 
sion  of  him  at  his  studio — in  addition  to  which  who 
indeed  knew  what  mightn't  have  happened  between 
the  Chelsea  pair  in  a  distracting  or  freshly  epoch-mak 
ing  way  since  then? — and  was  ready  to  show  himself 
for  perfectly  good-natured,  but  for  also  naturally  vague 
about  what  they  could  want  of  him  again.  "It  de 
pends,  ma'am,  on  the  sense  I  understand  you  to  attach 
to  that  word,"  was  in  any  case  the  answer  to  which  he 
at  his  convenience  treated  Jane. 

"I  attach  to  it  the  only  sense,"  she  returned,  "that 
could  force  me — by  my  understanding  of  it — to  any 
thing  so  painful  as  this  inquiry.  I  mean  are  you  so 

79 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

much  lovers  as  to  make  it  indispensable  you  should 
immediately  marry  ?" 

''Indispensable  to  who,  ma'am?"  was  what  Traffic 
heard  their  companion  now  promptly  enough  produce. 
To  which,  as  it  appeared  to  take  her  a  little  aback,  he 
added:  "Indispensable  to  you,  do  you  mean,  Mrs. 
Traffic?  Of  course,  you  see,  I  haven't  any  measure 
of  that." 

"Should  you  have  any  such  measure" — and  with  it 
she  had  for  her  husband  the  effect  now  of  quite  "speak 
ing  up" — "if  I  were  to  give  you  my  assurance  that  my 
niece  will  come  into  money  when  the  proper  means  are 
taken  of  making  her  connection  with  you  a  little  less 
— or  perhaps  I  should  say  altogether  less — distressing 
and  irregular?" 

The  auditor  of  this  exchange  rocked  noiselessly 
away  from  his  particular  point  of  dissociation,  throw 
ing  himself  at  random  upon  another,  before  Mr.  Pud- 
dick  appeared  again  to  have  made  up  his  mind,  or  at 
least  to  have  adjusted  his  intelligence;  but  the  move 
ment  had  been  on  Traffic's  part  but  the  instinct  to 
stand  off  more  and  more — a  vague  effort  of  retreat  that 
didn't  prevent  the  young  man's  next  response  to  pres 
sure  from  ringing  out  in  time  to  overtake  him.  "Is 
what  you  want  me  to  understand  then  that  you'll  hand 
somely  pay  her  if  she  marries  me  ?  Is  it  to  tell  me  that 
that  you  asked  me  to  come?"  It  was  queer,  Sidney 
felt  as  he  held  his  breath,  how  he  kept  liking  this  in 
ferior  person  the  better — the  better  for  his  carrying 

80 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

himself  so  little  like  any  sort  of  sneak — on  every  minute 
spent  in  his  company.  They  had  brought  him  there 
at  the  very  best  to  patronise  him,  and  now  would  sim 
ply  have  to  reckon  with  his  showing  clearly  for  so 
much  more  a  person  "of  the  world"  than  they.  Traf 
fic,  it  was  true,  was  becoming,  under  the  precious  ini 
tiation  opened  to  him  by  Mora,  whether  directly  or 
indirectly,  much  more  a  man  of  the  world  than  ever 
yet:  as  much  as  that  at  least  he  could  turn  over  in  his 
secret  soul  while  their  visitor  pursued.  "Perhaps  you 
also  mean,  ma'am,  that  you  suppose  me  to  require 
that  knowledge  to  determine  my  own  behaviour — in 
the  sense  that  if  she  comes  in  for  money  I  may  clutch 
at  the  way  to  come  into  it  too?"  He  put  this  as  the 
straightest  of  questions;  yet  he  also,  it  was  marked, 
followed  up  that  side-issue  further,  as  if  to  fight  shy  of 
what  Jane  wanted  most  to  know.  "Is  it  your  idea  of 
me  that  I  haven't  married  her  because  she  isn't  rich 
enough,  and  that  on  what  you  now  tell  me  I  may  think 
better  of  it?  Is  that  how  you  see  me,  Mrs.  Traffic?" 
he  asked,  at  his  quiet  pitch,  without  heat. 

It  might  have  floored  his  hostess  a  little,  to  her  hus 
band's  vision,  but  she  seemed  at  once  to  sit  up,  on  the 
contrary,  so  much  straighter,  that  he,  after  hearing 
her,  immediately  turned  round.  "  Don't  you  want,  Mr. 
Puddick,  to  be  able  to  marry  a  creature  so  beautiful 
and  so  clever?" 

This  was  somehow,  suddenly,  on  Jane's  part,  so 
prodigious,  for  art  and  subtlety,  Traffic  recognised, 

81 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

that  he  had  come  forward  again  and  a  remarkable 
thing  had  followed.  Their  guest  had  noticed  his  re 
turn  and  now  looked  up  at  him  from  over  the  tea-table, 
looked  in  a  manner  so  direct,  so  intelligent,  so  quite 
amusedly  critical,  that,  afresh,  before  he  knew  it,  he 
had  treated  the  little  fact  as  the  flicker  of  a  private 
understanding  between  them,  and  had  just  cynically — 
for  it  was  scarce  covertly — smiled  back  at  him  in  the 
independence  of  it.  So  there  he  was  again,  Sidney 
Traffic;  after  having  tacitly  admitted  to  Mora  that  her 
aunt  was  a  goose  of  geese — compared  to  himself  and 
her — he  was  at  present  putting  that  young  woman's 
accomplice  up  to  the  same  view  of  his  conjugal  loyalty, 
which  might  be  straightway  reported  to  the  girl.  Well, 
what  was  he,  all  the  same,  to  do?  Jane  was,  on  all 
the  ground  that  now  spread  immeasurably  about  them, 
a  goose  of  geese:  all  that  had  occurred  was  that  she 
more  showily  displayed  it;  and  that  she  might  indeed 
have  had  a  momentary  sense  of  triumph  when  the  best 
that  their  friend  first  found  to  meet  her  withal  proved 
still  another  evasion  of  the  real  point.  "I  don't  think, 
if  you'll  allow  me  to  say  so,  Mrs.  Traffic,  that  you've 
any  right  to  ask  me,  in  respect  to  Miss  Montravers, 
what  I  'want' — or  that  I'm  under  any  obligation  to  tell 
you.  I've  come  to  you,  quite  in  the  dark,  because  of 
Mr.  Traffic's  letter,  and  so  that  you  shouldn't  have  the 
shadow  of  anything  to  complain  of.  But  please  remem 
ber  that  I've  neither  appealed  to  you  in  any  way  nor  put 
myself  in  a  position  of  responsibility  toward  you." 

82 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

So  far,  but  only  so  far,  however,  had  he  successfully 
proceeded  before  Jane  was  down  upon  him  in  her 
new  trenchant  form.  "It's  not  of  your  responsibility 
to  us  I'm  talking,  but  all  of  your  responsibility  to  her. 
We  efface  ourselves,"  she  all  effectively  bridled,  "and 
we're  prepared  for  every  reasonable  sacrifice.  But 
we  do  still  a  little  care  what  becomes  of  the  child  to 
whom  we  gave  up  years  of  our  life.  If  you  care  enough 
for  her  to  live  with  her,  don't  you  care  enough  to  work 
out  some  way  of  making  her  your  very  own  by  the  aid 
of  such  help  as  we're  eager  to  render?  Or  are  we  to 
take  from  you,  as  against  that,  that,  even  thus  with 
the  way  made  easy,  she's  so  amazingly  constituted  as 
to  prefer,  in  the  face  of  the  world,  your  actual  terms  of 
intercourse?" 

The  young  man  had  kept  his  eyes  on  her  without 
flinching,  and  so  he  continued  after  she  had  spoken. 
He  then  drank  down  what  remained  of  his  tea  and, 
pushing  back  his  chair,  got  up.  He  hadn't  the  least 
arrogance,  not  the  least  fatuity  of  type — save  so  far  as 
it  might  be  offensive  in  such  a  place  to  show  a  young 
head  modelled  as  with  such  an  intention  of  some  one 
of  the  finer  economic  uses,  and  a  young  face  already 
a  little  worn  as  under  stress  of  that  economy — but  he 
couldn't  help  his  looking,  while  he  pulled  down  his  not 
very  fresh  waistcoat,  just  a  trifle  like  a  person  who  had 
expected  to  be  rather  better  regaled.  This  came  in 
deed,  for  his  host,  to  seeing  that  he  looked  bored; 
which  was  again,  for  that  gentleman,  a  source  of  humil- 

83 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

iation.  What  style  of  conversation,  comparatively,  on 
the  showing  of  it,  wouldn't  he  and  Mora  meanwhile  be 
having  together  ?  If  they  would  only  invite  him,  their 
uncle — or  rather  no,  when  it  came  to  that,  not  a  bit, 
worse  luck,  their  uncle — if  they  would  only  invite  him, 
their  humble  admirer,  to  tea!  During  which  play  of 
reflection  and  envy,  at  any  rate,  Mr.  Puddick  had  pre 
pared  to  take  his  leave.  "I  don't  think  I  can  talk  to 
you,  really,  about  my  'terms  of  intercourse '  with  any 
lady."  He  wasn't  superior,  exactly — wasn't  so  in  fact 
at  all,  but  was  nevertheless  crushing,  and  all  the  more 
that  his  next  word  seemed  spoken,  in  its  persistent 
charity,  for  their  help.  "If  it's  important  you  should 
get  at  that  sort  of  thing  it  strikes  me  you  should  do  so 
by  the  lady  herself." 

Our  friend,  at  this,  no  longer  stayed  his  hand. 
"Mrs.  Traffic  doesn't  see  her,"  he  explained  to  their 
companion — "as  the  situation  seems  to  present 
itself." 

"You  mean  Mora  doesn't  see  me,  my  dear!"  Mrs. 
Traffic  replied  with  spirit. 

He  met  it,  however,  with  a  smile  and  a  gallant 
inclination.  "Perhaps  I  mean  that  she  only  unsuc 
cessfully  tries  to." 

"She  doesn't  then  take  the  right  way!"  Mora's 
aunt  tossed  off. 

Mr.  Puddick  looked  at  her  blandly.  "Then  you 
lose  a  good  deal,  ma'am.  For  if  you  wish  to  learn 
from  me  how  much  I  admire  your  niece,"  he  continued 

84 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

straight,  "I  don't  in  the  least  mind  answering  to  that 
that  you  may  put  my  sentiments  at  the  highest.  I 
adore  Miss  Montravers,"  he  brought  out,  after  a  slight 
catch  of  his  breath,  roundly  and  impatiently.  "I'd 
do  anything  in  the  world  for  her." 

"Then  do  you  pretend,"  said  Jane  with  a  rush,  as  if 
to  break  through  this  opening  before  she  was  checked, 
"then  do  you  pretend  that  you're  living  with  her  in 
innocence?" 

Sidney  Traffic  had  a  groan  for  it — a  hunched  groan 
in  which  he  exhaled  the  anguish,  as  he  would  have 
called  it,  of  his  false  position;  but  Walter  Puddick  only 
continued,  in  his  fine  unblinking  way,  to  meet  Jane's 
eyes.  "I  repudiate  absolutely  your  charge  of  my  'liv 
ing'  with  her  or  of  her  living  with  me.  Miss  Mon 
travers  is  irreproachable  and  immaculate." 

"All  appearances  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding?" 
Mrs.  Traffic  cried.  "You'd  do  anything  in  the  world 
for  her,  and  she'd  by  the  same  token,  I  suppose,  do  any 
thing  in  the  world  for  you,  and  yet  you  ask  me  to 
believe  that,  all  the  while,  you  are,  together,  in  this 
extraordinary  way,  doing  nothing  in  the  world — ?" 
With  which,  to  his  further  excruciation,  her  husband, 
with  eyes  averted  from  her,  felt  her  face  turn,  as  for  a 
strained  and  unnatural  intensity  of  meaning,  upon 
himself.  "He  attempts,  dear,  to  prove  too  much! 
But  I  only  desire,"  she  continued  to  their  guest,  "that 
you  should  definitely  understand  how  far  I'm  willing 
to  go." 

85 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"It  is  rather  far  you  know,"  Sidney,  at  this,  in  spite 
of  everything,  found  himself  persuasively  remarking  to 
Puddick. 

It  threw  his  wife  straight  upon  him,  and  he  felt  her 
there,  more  massively  weighted  than  he  had  ^e-ver 
known  her,  while  she  said:  "I'll  make  it  four  hundred 
and  fifty.  Yes,  a  year,"  she  then  exaltedly  pursued  to 
their  visitor.  "I  pass  you  my  word  of  honour  for  it. 
That's  what  I'll  allow  Mora  as  your  wife." 

Traffie  watched  him,  under  this — and  the  more,  that 
an  odd  spasm  or  shade  had  come  into  his  face;  "Which 
in  turn  made  our  friend  wish  the  more  to  bridge  sgiae- 
how  the  dark  oddity  of  their  difference.  What  was  all 
the  while  at  bottom  sharpest  for  him  was  that  they 
might  somehow  pull  more  together.  "That,  you 
see,"  he  fluted  for  conciliation,  "is  her  aunt's  really, 
you  know,  I  think,  rather  magnificent  message  for 
her." 

The  young  man  took  in  clearly,  during  a  short  silence, 
the  material  magnificence — while  Traffic  again  noted 
how  almost  any  sort  of  fineness  of  appreciation  could 
show  in  his  face.  "I'm  sure  I'm  much  obliged  to  you," 
he  presently  said. 

"You  don't  refuse  to  let  her  have  it,  I  suppose?" 
Mrs.  Traffic  further  proceeded. 

Walter  Puddick's  clear  eyes — clear  at  least  as  his 
host  had  hitherto  judged  them — seemed  for  the  minute 
attached  to  the  square,  spacious  sum.  "I  don't  refuse 
anything.  I'll  give  her  your  message." 

86 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

"Well,"  said  Jane,  " that's  the  assurance  we've 
wanted."  And  she  gathered  herself  as  for  relief,  on 
her  own  side,  at  his  departure. 

He  lingered  but  a  moment — which  was  long  enough, 
however,  for  her  husband  to  see  him,  as  with  an  in- 
tenser  twinge  of  the  special  impatience  just  noted  in 
him,  look,  all  unhappily,  from  Mora's  aunt  to  Mora's 
uncle.  "  Of  course  I  can't  mention  to  her  such  a  fact. 
But  I  wish,  all  the  same,"  he  said  with  a  queer  sick 
smile,  "that  you'd  just  simply  let  us  alone." 

He  turned  away  with  it,  but  Jane  had  already  gone 
on.  "Well,  you  certainly  seem  in  sufficient  possession 
of  the  right  way  to  make  us!" 

Walter  Puddick,  picking  up  his  hat  and  with  his 
distinctly  artistic  and  animated  young  back  presented 
— though  how  it  came  to  show  so  strikingly  for  such 
Sidney  Traffic  couldn't  have  said — reached  one  of  the 
doors  of  the  room  which  was  not  right  for  his  egress; 
while  Sidney  stood  divided  between  the  motion  of  cor 
recting  and  guiding  him  and  the  irresistible  need  of 
covering  Jane  with  a  last  woeful  reproach.  For  he 
had  seen  something,  had  caught  it  from  the  sharp 
flicker  of  trouble  finally  breaking  through  Puddick' s 
face,  caught  it  from  the  fact  that — yes,  positively— 
the  upshot  of  their  attack  on  him  was  a  pair  of  hot 
tears  in  his  eyes.  They  stood  for  queer,  deep  things, 
assuredly,  these  tears;  they  spoke  portentously,  since 
that  was  her  note,  of  wonderful  Mora;  but  there  was 
an  indelicacy  in  the  pressure  that  had  thus  made  the 

87 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

source  of  them  public.  "You  have  dished  us  now!" 
was  what,  for  a  Parthian  shot,  Jane's  husband  would 
have  liked  to  leave  with  her,  and  what  in  fact  he  would 
have  articulately  phrased  if  he  hadn't  rather  given 
himself  to  getting  their  guest  with  the  least  discomfort 
possible  out  of  the  room.  Into  the  hall  he  ushered  him, 
and  there — absurd,  incoherent  person  as  he  had  again 
to  know  himself  for — vaguely  yet  reassuringly,  with  an 
arm  about  him,  patted  him  on  the  back.  The  full 
force  of  this  victim's  original  uttered  warning  came 
back  to  him;  the  probable  perfect  wisdom  of  his  plea 
that,  since  he  had  infinitely  to  manage,  their  line,  the 
aunt's  and  the  uncle's,  was  just  to  let  him  feel  his  way; 
the  gage  of  his  sincerity  as  to  this  being  the  fact  of  his 
attachment.  Sidney  Traffic  seemed  somehow  to  feel 
the  fullest  force  of  both  these  truths  during  the  moment 
his  young  friend  recognised  the  intention  of  his  gesture; 
and  thus  for  a  little,  at  any  rate,  while  the  closed  door 
of  the  drawing-room  and  the  shelter  of  the  porch  kept 
them  unseen  and  unheard  from  within,  they  faced 
each  other  for  the  embarrassment  that,  as  Traffic 
would  have  been  quite  ready  to  put  it,  they  had  in  com 
mon.  Their  eyes  met  their  eyes,  their  conscious  grin 
their  grin;  hang  it,  yes,  the  screw  was  on  Mora's  lover. 
Puddick's  recognition  of  his  sympathy — well,  proved 
that  he  needed  something,  though  he  didn't  need  inter 
ference  from  the  outside;  which  couldn't,  any  way  they 
might  arrange  it,  seem  delicate  enough.  Jane's  ob 
trusion  of  her  four  hundred  and  fifty  affected  Traffic 

88 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

thus  as  singularly  gross;  though  part  of  that  association 
might  proceed  for  him,  doubtless,  from  the  remark  in 
which  his  exasperated  sensibility  was,  the  next  thing, 
to  culminate. 

"I'm  afraid  I  can't  explain  to  you,"  he  first  said, 
however,  "why  it  is  that  in  spite  of  my  indoctrination, 
my  wife  fails  to  see  that  there's  only  one  answer  a  gen 
tleman  may  make  to  the  so  intimate  question  she  put 
to  you." 

"I  don't  know  anything  about  that;  I  wasn't  at  all 
making  her  a  conventional  reply.  But  I  don't  mind 
assuring  you,  on  my  sacred  honour " 

So  Walter  Puddick  was  going  on,  but  his  host,  with 
a  firm  touch  of  his  arm,  and  very  handsomely,  as  that 
host  felt,  or  at  least  desired  to  feel,  wouldn't  have  it. 
"Ah,  it's  none  of  my  business;  I  accept  what  you've 
said,  and  it  wouldn't  matter  to  you  if  I  didn't.  Your 
situation's  evidently  remarkable,"  Traffic  all  sociably 
added,  "and  I  don't  mind  telling  you  that  I,  for  one, 
have  confidence  in  your  tact.  I  recognised,  that  day  I 
went  to  see  you,  that  this  was  the  only  thing  to  do,  and 
have  done  my  best,  ever  since,  to  impress  it  on  Mrs. 
Traffic.  She  replies  to  me  that  I  talk  at  my  ease,  and 
the  appearances  are  such,  I  recognise,  that  it  would  be 
odd  she  shouldn't  mind  them.  In  short  she  has  shown 
you  how  much  she  does  mind  them.  I  tell  her,"  our 
friend  pursued,  "that  we  mustn't  weigh  appearances 
too  much  against  realities — and  that  of  those  realities," 
he  added,  balancing  again  a  little  on  his  toes  and  clasp- 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

ing  his  waist  with  his  hands,  which  at  the  same  time 
just  worked  down  the  back  of  his  waistcoat,  "you  must 
be  having  your  full  share."  Traffic  liked,  as  the  effect 
of  this,  to  see  his  visitor  look  at  him  harder;  he  felt  how 
the  ideal  turn  of  their  relation  would  be  that  he  should 
show  all  the  tact  he  was  so  incontestably  showing,  and 
yet  at  the-  same  time  not  miss  anything  that  would  be 
interesting.  "You  see  of  course  for  yourself  how  little, 
after  all,  she  knows  Mora.  She  doesn't  appreciate  the 
light  hand  that  you  must  have  to  have  with  her — and 
that,  I  take  it,"  Sidney  Traffic  smiled,  "is  what  you 
contend  for  with  us." 

"I  don't  contend  for  anything  with  you,  sir,"  said 
Walter  Puddick. 

"Ah,  but  you  do  want  to  be  let  alone,"  his  friend 
insisted. 

The  young  man  turned  graver  in  proportion  to  this 
urbanity.  "Mrs.  Traffic  has  closed  my  mouth." 

"By  laying  on  you,  you  mean,  the  absolute  obliga 
tion  to  report  her  offer — ?"  That  lady's  representa 
tive  continued  to  smile,  but  then  it  was  that  he  yet  began 
to  see  where  fine  freedom  of  thought — translated  into 
act  at  least — would  rather  grotesquely  lodge  him.  He 
hung  fire,  none  the  less,  but  for  an  instant;  even  though 
not  quite  saying  what  he  had  been  on  the  point  of.  "I 
should  like  to  feel  at  liberty  to  put  it  to  you  that  if,  in 
your  place,  I  felt  that  a  statement  of  Mrs.  Traffic's 
overture  would  probably,  or  even  possibly,  dish  me,  I'm 
not  sure  I  should  make  a  scruple  of  holding  my  tongue 

90 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

about  it.  But  of  course  I  see  that  I  can't  very  well  go 
so  far  without  looking  to  you  as  if  my  motive  might  be 
mixed.  You  might  naturally  say  that  I  can't  want  my 
wife's  money  to  go  out  of  the  house." 

Puddick  had  an  undissimulated  pause  for  the  re 
newed  effort  to  do  justice  to  so  much  elegant  arrange 
ment  of  the  stiff  truth  of  his  case;  but  his  intelligence 
apparently  operated,  and  even  to  the  extent  of  showing 
him  that  his  companion  really  meant,  more  and  more, 
as  well — as  well,  that  is,  to  him — as  it  was  humanly 
conceivable  that  Mrs.  Traffic's  husband  could  mean. 
"Your  difficulty's  different  from  mine,  and  from  the 
appearance  I  incur  in  carrying  Miss  Montravers  her 
aunt's  message  as  a  clear  necessity  and  at  any 
risk." 

"You  mean  that  your  being  conscientious  about  it 
may  look  as  if  the  risk  you  care  least  to  face  is  that  of 
not  with  a  little  patience  coming  in  yourself  for  the 
money?"  After  which,  with  a  glitter  fairly  sublime  in 
its  profession  of  his  detachment  from  any  stupid  course: 
"You  can  be  sure,  you  know,  that  Pd  be  sure !" 

"Sure  I'm  not  a  pig?"  the  young  man  asked  in  a 
manner  that  made  Traffic  feel  quite  possessed  at  last 
of  his  confidence. 

"Even  if  you  keep  quiet  I  shall  know  you're  not, 
and  shall  believe  also  you  won't  have  thought  me  one." 
To  which,  in  the  exaltation  produced  by  this,  he  next 
added:  "Isn't  she,  with  it  all — with  all  she  has  done 
for  you  I  mean — splendidly  fond  of  you?" 

91 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

The  question  proved,  however,  but  one  of  those  that 
seemed  condemned  to  cast,  by  their  action,  a  chill; 
which  was  expressed,  on  the  young  man's  part,  with  a 
certain  respectful  dryness.  "How  do  you  know,  sir, 
what  Miss  Montravers  has  done  for  me?" 

Sidney  Traffic  felt  himself  enjoy,  on  this,  a  choice  of 
replies — one  of  which  indeed  would  have  sprung  easiest 
from  his  lips.  "Oh  now,  come!"  seemed  for  the 
instant  what  he  would  have  liked  most  to  hear  himself 
say;  but  he  renounced  the  pleasure — even  though  mak 
ing  up  for  it  a  little  by  his  actual  first  choice.  "Don't 
I  know  at  least  that  she  left  the  honourable  shelter  of 
this  house  for  you?" 

Walter  Puddick  had  a  wait.  "I  never  asked  it  of 
her." 

"You  didn't  seduce  her,  no — and  even  her  aunt 
doesn't  accuse  you  of  it.  But  that  she  should  have 
given  up — well,  what  she  has  given  up,  moderately  as 
you  may  estimate  it,"  Traffic  again  smiled — "surely 
has  something  to  say  about  her  case?" 

"What  has  more  to  say  than  anything  else,"  Pud 
dick  promptly  returned  to  this,  "is  that  she's  the  very 
cleverest  and  most  original  and  most  endowed,  and  in 
every  way  most  wonderful,  person  I've  known  in  all 
my  life." 

His  entertainer  fairly  glowed,  for  response,  with  the 
light  of  it.  "Thank  you  then!"  Traffic  thus  radiated. 

"  'Thank  you  for  nothing!'  "  cried  the  other  with  a 
short  laugh  and  set  into  motion  down  the  steps  and  the 

92 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

garden  walk  by  this  final  attestation  of  the  essential 
impenetrability  even  of  an  acutest  young  artist's  vie 
intime  with  a  character  sketchable  in  such  terms. 

Traffic  accompanied  him  to  the  gate,  but  wondering, 
as  they  went,  if  it  was  quite  inevitable  one  should  come 
back  to  feeling,  as  the  result  of  every  sort  of  brush  with 
people  who  were  really  living,  like  so  very  small  a  boy. 
No,  no,  one  must  stretch  to  one's  tallest  again.  It 
restored  one's  stature  a  little  then  that  one  didn't  now 
mind  that  this  demonstration  would  prove  to  Jane, 
should  she  be  waiting  in  the  drawing-room  and  watch 
ing  for  one's  return,  that  one  had  detained  their  guest 
for  so  much  privacy  in  the  porch.  "Well,  take  care 
what  you  do!"  Traffle  bravely  brought  out  for  good-bye. 

"  Oh,  I  shall  tell  her,"  Puddick  replied  under  the  effect 
of  his  renewed  pat  of  the  back;  and  even,  standing  there 
an  instant,  had  a  further  indulgence.  "She  loathes 
my  unfortunate  name  of  course;  but  she's  such  an  in 
calculable  creature  that  my  information  possibly  may 
fetch  her." 

There  was  a  final  suddenness  of  candour  in  it  that 
made  Traffle  gape.  "Oh,  our  names,  and  hers — ! 
But  is  her  loathing  of  yours  then  all  that's  the  matter?" 

Walter  Puddick  stood  some  seconds;  he  might,  in 
pursuance  of  what  had  just  passed,  have  been  going  to 
say  things.  But  he  had  decided  again  the  next  mo 
ment  for  the  fewest  possible.  "No!"  he  tossed  back 
as  he  walked  off. 


93 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 


V 

"WE  seem  to  have  got  so  beautifully  used  to  it," 
Traffic  remarked  more  than  a  month  later  to  Jane— 
"we  seem  to  have  lived  into  it  and  through  it  so,  and 
to  have  suffered  and  surmounted  the  worst,  that,  upon 
my  word,  I  scarce  see  what's  the  matter  now,  or  what, 
that's  so  very  dreadful,  it's  doing  or  has  done  for  us. 
We  haven't  the  interest  of  her,  no,"  he  had  gone  on, 
slowly  pacing  and  revolving  things  according  to  his 
wont,  while  the  sharer  of  his  life,  tea  being  over  and 
the  service  removed,  reclined  on  a  sofa,  perfectly  still 
and  with  her  eyes  rigidly  closed;  "we've  lost  that,  and 
I  agree  that  it  was  great — I  mean  the  interest  of  the 
number  of  ideas  the  situation  presented  us  with.  That 
has  dropped — by  our  own  act,  evidently;  we  must  have 
simply  settled  the  case,  a  month  ago,  in  such  a  way  as 
that  we  shall  have  no  more  acquaintance  with  it;  by 
which  I  mean  no  more  of  the  fun  of  it.  I,  for  one,  con 
fess  I  miss  the  fun — put  it  only  at  the  fun  of  our  hav 
ing  had  to  wriggle  so  with  shame,  or,  call  it  if  you  like, 
to  live  so  under  arms,  against  prying  questions  and 
the  too  easy  exposure  of  our  false  explanations;  which 
only  proves,  however,  that,  as  I  say,  the  worst  that  has 
happened  to  us  appears  to  be  that  we're  going  to  find 
life  tame  again — as  tame  as  it  was  before  ever  Mora 
came  into  it  so  immensely  to  enrich  and  agitate  it. 
She  has  gone  out  of  it,  obviously,  to  leave  it  flat  and 
forlorn — tasteless  after  having  had  for  so  many  months 

94 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

the  highest  flavour.  If,  by  her  not  thanking  you  even 
though  she  declines,  by  her  not  acknowledging  in  any 
way  your — as  I  admit — altogether  munificent  offer,  it 
seems  indicated  that  we  shall  hold  her  to  have  defi 
nitely  enrolled  herself  in  the  deplorable  'flaunting' 
class,  we  must  at  least  recognise  that  she  doesn't  flaunt 
at  us,  at  whomever  else  she  may;  and  that  she  has  in 
short  cut  us  as  neatly  and  effectively  as,  in  the  event  of 
her  conclusive,  her  supreme  contumacy,  we  could  have 
aspired  to  cut  her.  Never  was  a  scandal,  therefore, 
less  scandalous — more  naturally  a  disappointment,  that 
is,  to  our  good  friends,  whose  resentment  of  this  holy 
calm,  this  absence  of  any  echo  of  any  convulsion,  of 
any  sensation  of  any  kind  to  be  picked  up,  strikes  me 
as  ushering  in  the  only  form  of  ostracism  our  dissimu 
lated  taint,  our  connection  with  lurid  facts  that  might 
have  gone  on  making  us  rather  eminently  worth  while, 
will  have  earned  for  us.  But  aren't  custom  and  use 
breaking  us  in  to  the  sense  even  of  that  anticlimax, 
and  preparing  for  us  future  years  of  wistful,  rueful, 
regretful  thought  of  the  time  when  everything  was  nice 
and  dreadful?" 

Mrs.  Traffic's  posture  was  now,  more  and  more, 
certainly,  this  recumbent  sightless  stillness;  which  she 
appeared  to  have  resorted  to  at  first — after  the  launch 
ing,  that  is,  of  her  ultimatum  to  Mr.  Puddick — as  a 
sign  of  the  intensity  with  which  she  awaited  results. 
There  had  been  no  results,  alas,  there  were  none  from 
week  to  week;  never  was  the  strain  of  suspense  less 

95 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

gratefully  crowned;  with  the  drawback,  moreover,  that 
they  could  settle  to  nothing — not  even  to  the  alternative, 
that  of  the  cold  consciousness  of  slighted  magnanimity, 
in  which  Jane  had  assumed  beforehand  that  she  should 
find  her  last  support.  Her  husband  circled  about  her 
couch,  with  his  eternal  dim  whistle,  at  a  discreet  dis 
tance — as  certain  as  if  he  turned  to  catch  her  in  the  act 
that  when  his  back  was  presented  in  thoughtful  retreat 
her  tightened  eyes  opened  to  rest  on  it  with  peculiar 
sharpness.  She  waited  for  the  proof  that  she  had  inter 
vened  to  advantage — the  advantage  of  Mora's  social 
future — and  she  had  to  put  up  with  Sidney's  watching 
her  wait.  So  he,  on  his  side,  lived  under  her  tacit 
criticism  of  that  attention;  and  had  they  asked  them 
selves,  the  comfortless  pair — as  it's  in  fact  scarce  con 
ceivable  that  they  didn't — what  it  would  practically 
have  cost  them  to  receive  their  niece  without  questions, 
they  might  well  have  judged  their  present  ordeal  much 
the  dearer.  When  Sidney  had  felt  his  wife  glare  at 
him  undetectedly  for  a  fortnight  he  knew  at  least  what 
it  meant,  and  if  she  had  signified  how  much  he  might 
have  to  pay  for  it  should  he  presume  again  to  see  Mora 
alone,  she  was  now,  in  their  community  of  a  quietude 
that  had  fairly  soured  on  their  hands,  getting  ready  to 
quarrel  with  him  for  his  poverty  of  imagination  about 
that  menace.  Absolutely,  the  conviction  grew  for  him, 
she  would  have  liked  him  better  to  do  something,  even 
something  inconsiderate  of  her  to  the  point  of  rudeness, 
than  simply  parade  there  in  the  deference  that  left  her 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

to  languish.  The  fault  of  this  conspicuous  propriety, 
which  gave  on  her  nerves,  was  that  it  did  nothing  to 
refresh  their  decidedly  rather  starved  sense  of  their 
case;  so  that  Traffic  was  frankly  merciless — frankly, 
that  is,  for  himself — in  his  application  of  her  warning. 
There  was  nothing  he  would  indeed  have  liked  better 
than  to  call  on  Mora — quite,  as  who  should  say,  in  the 
friendly  way  to  which  her  own  last  visit  at  Wimbledon 
had  set  so  bright  an  example.  At  the  same  time, 
though  he  revelled  in  his  acute  reflection  as  to  the  part 
ner  of  his  home — "I've  only  to  go,  and  then  come 
back  with  some  'new  fact,'  a  la  Dreyfus,  in  order  to 
make  her  sit  up  in  a  false  flare  that  will  break  our 
insufferable  spell" — he  was  yet  determined  that  the 
flare,  certain  to  take  place  sooner  or  later,  should  pre 
cede  his  act;  so  large  a  licence  might  he  then  obviously 
build  upon  it.  His  excursions  to  town  were  on  occa 
sion,  even,  in  truth,  not  other  than  perverse — deter 
mined,  that  is,  he  was  well  aware,  by  their  calculated 
effect  on  Jane,  who  could  imagine  in  his  absence,  each 
time,  that  he  might  be  "following  something  up"  (an 
expression  that  had  in  fact  once  slipped  from  her), 
might  be  having  the  gumption,  in  other  words,  to 
glean  a  few  straws  for  their  nakeder  nest;  imagine  it, 
yes,  only  to  feel  herself  fall  back  again  on  the  mere 
thorns  of  consistency. 

It  wasn't,  nevertheless,  that  he  took  all  his  exercise 
to  this  supersubtle  tune;  the  state  of  his  own  nerves 
treated  him  at  moments  to  larger  and  looser  exactions; 

97 


THE   FINER  GRAIN 

which  is  why,  though  poor  Jane's  sofa  still  remained 
his  centre  of  radiation,  the  span  of  his  unrest  some 
times  embraced  half  London.  He  had  never  been  on 
such  fidgety  terms  with  his  club,  which  he  could  neither 
not  resort  to,  from  his  suburb,  with  an  unnatural  fre 
quency,  nor  make,  in  the  event,  any  coherent  use  of;  so 
that  his  suspicion  of  his  not  remarkably  carrying  it  off 
there  was  confirmed  to  him,  disconcertingly,  one  morn 
ing  when  his  dash  townward  had  been  particularly 
wild,  by  the  free  address  of  a  fellow-member  prone 
always  to  overdoing  fellowship  and  who  had  doubtless 
for  some  time  amusedly  watched  his  vague  gyrations 
— "I  say,  Traff,  old  man,  what  in  the  world,  this  time, 
have  you  got  'on' ?"  It  had  never  been  anything  but 
easy  to  answer  the  ass,  and  was  easier  than  ever  now 
— "'On'?  You  don't  suppose  I  dress,  do  you,  to 
come  to  meet  you?" — yet  the  effect  of  the  nasty  little 
mirror  of  his  unsatisfied  state  so  flashed  before  him 
was  to  make  him  afresh  wander  wide,  if  wide  half  the 
stretch  of  Trafalgar  Square  could  be  called.  He 
turned  into  the  National  Gallery,  where  the  great  mas 
ters  were  tantalising  more  by  their  indifference  than 
by  any  offer  of  company,  and  where  he  could  take  up 
again  his  personal  tradition  of  a  lawless  range.  One 
couldn't  be  a  raffine  at  Wimbledon — no,  not  with  any 
comfort;  but  he  quite  liked  to  think  how  he  had  never 
been  anything  less  in  the  great  museum,  distinguished 
as  he  thus  was  from  those  who  gaped  impartially  and 
did  the  place  by  schools.  His  sympathies  were  special 

98 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

and  far-scattered,  just  as  the  places  of  pilgrimage  he 
most  fondly  reverted  to  were  corners  unnoted  and 
cold,  where  the  idol  in  the  numbered  shrine  sat  apart 
to  await  him. 

So  he  found  himself  at  the  end  of  five  minutes  in  one 
of  the  smaller,  one  of  the  Dutch  rooms — in  a  temple 
bare  in  very  fact  at  that  moment  save  for  just  one 
other  of  the  faithful.  This  was  a  young  person — visi 
bly  young,  from  the  threshold  of  the  place,  in  spite  of 
the  back  presented  for  an  instant  while  a  small  picture 
before  which  she  had  stopped  continued  to  hold  her; 
but  who  turned  at  sound  of  his  entering  footfall,  and 
who  then  again,  as  by  an  alertness  in  this  movement, 
engaged  his  eyes.  With  which  it  was  remarkably 
given  to  Traffic  to  feel  himself  recognise  even  almost 
to  immediate,  to  artless  extravagance  of  display,  two 
things;  the  first  that  his  fellow- votary  in  the  unpro- 
faned  place  and  at  the  odd  morning  hour  was  none 
other  than  their  invincible  Mora,  surprised,  by  this 
extraordinary  fluke,  in  her  invincibility,  and  the  second 
(oh  his  certainty  of  that  /)  that  she  was  expecting  to 
be  joined  there  by  no  such  pale  fellow-adventurer  as 
her  whilom  uncle.  It  amazed  him,  as  it  also  annoyed 
him,  on  the  spot,  that  his  heart,  for  thirty  seconds, 
should  be  standing  almost  still;  but  he  wasn't  to  be 
able  afterward  to  blink  it  that  he  had  at  once  quite 
gone  to  pieces,  any  slight  subsequent  success  in  recov 
ering  himself  to  the  contrary  notwithstanding.  Their 
happening  thus  to  meet  was  obviously  a  wonder — it 

99 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

made  him  feel  unprepared;  but  what  especially  did 
the  business  for  him,  he  subsequently  reflected,  was 
again  the  renewed  degree,  and  for  that  matter  the 
developed  kind,  of  importance  that  the  girl's  beauty 
gave  her.  Dear  Jane,  at  home,  as  he  knew — and  as 
Mora  herself  probably,  for  that  matter,  did — was  sunk 
in  the  conviction  that  she  was  leading  a  life;  but  what 
ever  she  was  doing  it  was  clearly  the  particular  thing 
she  might  best  be  occupied  with.  How  could  any 
thing  be  better  for  a  lovely  creature  than  thus  to  grow 
from  month  to  month  in  loveliness? — so  that  she  was 
able  to  stand  there  before  him  with  no  more  felt  incon 
venience  than  the  sense  of  the  mere  tribute  of  his  eyes 
could  promptly  rectify. 

That  ministered  positively  to  his  weakness — the 
justice  he  did  on  the  spot  to  the  rare  shade  of  human 
felicity,  human  impunity,  human  sublimity,  call  it 
what  one  would,  surely  dwelling  in  such  a  conscious 
ness.  How  could  a  girl  have  to  think  long,  have  to 
think  more  than  three-quarters  of  a  second,  under  any 
stress  whatever,  of  anything  in  the  world  but  that  her 
presence  was  an  absolute  incomparable  value?  The 
prodigious  thing,  too,  was  that  it  had  had  in  the  past, 
and  the  comparatively  recent  past  that  one  easily 
recalled,  to  content  itself  with  counting  twenty  times 
less:  a  proof  precisely  that  any  conditions  so  deter 
mined  could  only  as  a  matter  of  course  have  been 
odious  and,  at  the  last,  outrageous  to  her.  Goodness 
knew  with  what  glare  of  graceless  inaction  this  rush 

100 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

of  recognitions  was  accompanied  in  poor  Traffic;  who 
was  later  on  to  ask  himself  whether  he  had  showed  to 
less  advantage  in  the  freshness  of  his  commotion  or 
in  the  promptly  enough  subsequent  rage  of  his  cool 
ness.  The  commotion,  in  any  case,  had  doubtless 
appeared  more  to  paralyse  than  to  agitate  him,  since 
Mora  had  had  time  to  come  nearer  while  he  showed 
for  helplessly  planted.  He  hadn't  even  at  the  mo 
ment  been  proud  of  his  presence  of  mind,  but  it  was 
as  they  afterward  haunted  his  ear  that  the  echoes  of 
what  he  at  first  found  to  say  were  most  odious  to  him. 
"I'm  glad  to  take  your  being  here  for  a  sign  you've 
not  lost  your  interest  in  Art" — that  might  have  passed 
if  he  hadn't  so  almost  feverishly  floundered  on.  "I 
hope  you  keep  up  your  painting — with  such  a  position 
as  you  must  be  in  for  serious  work;  I  always  thought, 
you  know,  that  you'd  do  something  if  you'd  stick  to  it. 
In  fact  we  quite  miss  your  not  bringing  us  something 
to  admire  as  you  sometimes  did;  we  haven't,  you  see, 
much  of  an  art-atmosphere  now.  I'm  glad  you're  fond 
of  the  Dutch — that  little  Metsu  over  there  that  I  think 
you  were  looking  at  is  a  pet  thing  of  my  own;  and,  if 
my  living  to  do  something  myself  hadn't  been  the 
most  idiotic  of  dreams,  something  in  his  line — though 
of  course  a  thousand  miles  behind  him — was  what  I 
should  have  tried  to  go  in  for.  You  see  at  any  rate 
where — missing  as  I  say  our  art-atmosphere — I  have 
to  come  to  find  one.  Not  such  a  bad  place  certainly" 
—so  he  had  hysterically  gabbled;  "especially  at  this 

101 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

quiet  hour — as  I  see  you  yourself  quite  feel.  I  just 
turned  in — though  it  does  discourage!  I  hope,  how 
ever,  it  hasn't  that  effect  on  you"  he  knew  himself  to 
grin  with  the  last  awkwardness;  making  it  worse  the 
next  instant  by  the  gay  insinuation:  "I'm  bound  to 
say  it  isn't  how  you  look — discouraged!" 

It  reeked  for  him  with  reference  even  while  he  said 
it — for  the  truth  was  but  too  intensely,  too  insidiously, 
somehow,  that  her  confidence  implied,  that  it  in  fact 
bravely  betrayed,  grounds.  He  was  to  appreciate  this 
wild  waver,  in  retrospect,  as  positive  dizziness  in  a 
narrow  pass — the  abyss  being  naturally  on  either  side; 
that  abyss  of  the  facts  of  the  girl's  existence  which  he 
must  thus  have  seemed  to  rush  into,  a  smirking,  a 
disgusting  tribute  to  them  through  his  excessive  wish 
to  show  how  clear  he  kept  of  them.  The  terrible,  the 
fatal  truth  was  that  she  made  everything  too  difficult 
—or  that  this,  at  any  rate,  was  how  she  enjoyed  the 
exquisite  privilege  of  affecting  him.  She  watched  him, 
she  saw  him  splash  to  keep  from  sinking,  with  a  piti 
less  cold  sweet  irony;  she  gave  him  rope  as  a  syren  on 
a  headland  might  have  been  amused  at  some  bather 
beyond  his  depth  and  unable  to  swim.  It  was  all  the 
fault — his  want  of  ease  was — of  the  real  extravagance 
of  his  idea  of  not  letting  her  spy  even  the  tip  of  the  tail 
of  any  "freedom"  with  her;  thanks  to  which  fatality 
she  had  indeed  the  game  in  her  own  hands.  She 
exhaled  a  distinction— it  glanced  out  of  every  shade  of 
selection,  every  turn  of  expression,  in  her  dress,  though 

102 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

she  had  always,  for  that  matter,  had  the  genius  of 
felicity  there — which  was  practically  the  "new  fact" 
all  Wimbledon  had  been  awaiting;  and  yet  so  perverse 
was  their  relation  that  to  mark  at  all  any  special  con 
sideration  for  it  was  to  appear  just  to  make  the  allu 
sion  he  was  most  forbidding  himself.  It  was  hard, 
his  troubled  consciousness  told  him,  to  be  able  neither 
to  overlook  her  new  facts  without  brutality  nor  to 
recognise  them  without  impertinence;  and  he  was 
frankly  at  the  end  of  his  resources  by  the  time  he 
ceased  beating  the  air.  Then  it  was,  yes,  then  it  was 
perfectly,  as  if  she  had  patiently  let  him  show  her  each 
of  his  ways  of  making  a  fool  of  himself;  when  she  still 
said  nothing  a  moment — and  yet  still  managed  to  keep 
him  ridiculous — as  if  for  certainty  on  that  head.  It 
was  true  that  when  she  at  last  spoke  she  swept  every 
thing  away. 

"It's  a  great  chance  my  meeting  you — for  what  you 
so  kindly  think  of  me." 

She  brought  that  out  as  if  he  had  been  uttering  mere 
vain  sounds — to  which  she  preferred  the  comparative 
seriousness  of  the  human,  or  at  least  of  the  mature, 
state,  and  her  unexpectedness  it  was  that  thus  a  little 
stiffened  him  up.  "What  I  think  of  you?  How  do 
you  know  what  I  think?" 

She  dimly  and  charmingly  smiled  at  him,  for  it 
wasn't  really  that  she  was  harsh.  She  was  but  infi 
nitely  remote — the  syren  on  her  headland  dazzlingly 
in  view,  yet  communicating,  precisely,  over  such  an 

103 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

abyss.  "  Because  it's  so  much  more,  you  mean,  than 
you  know  yourself?  If  you  don't  know  yourself,  if 
you  know  as  little  as,  I  confess,  you  strike  me  as  do 
ing,"  she,  however,  at  once  went  on,  "I'm  more  sorry 
for  you  than  anything  else;  even  though  at  the  best,  I 
dare  say,  it  must  seem  odd  to  you  to  hear  me  so  patron 
ising."  It  was  borne  in  upon  him  thus  that  she  would 
now  make  no  difference,  to  his  honour — to  that  of 
his  so  much  more  emancipated  spirit  at  least — be 
tween  her  aunt  and  her  uncle;  so  much  should  the 
poor  uncle  enjoy  for  his  pains.  He  should  stand  or 
fall  with  fatal  Jane — for  at  this  point  he  was  already 
sure  Jane  had  been  fatal;  it  was  in  fact  with  fatal 
Jane  tied  as  a  millstone  round  his  neck  that  he  at 
present  knew  himself  sinking.  "You  try  to  make 
grabs  at  some  idea,  but  the  simplest  never  occurs  to 
you." 

"What  do  you  call  the  simplest,  Mora?"  he  at  this 
heard  himself  whine. 

"Why,  my  being  simply  a  good  girl.  You  gape  at 
it" — he  was  trying  exactly  not  to — "as  if  it  passed 
your  belief;  but  it's  really  all  the  while,  to  my  own 
sense,  what  has  been  the  matter  with  me.  I  mean, 
you  see,  a  good  creature — wanting  to  live  at  peace. 
Everything,  however,  occurs  to  you  but  that — and  in 
spite  of  my  trying  to  show  you.  You  never  under 
stood,"  she  said  with  her  sad,  quiet  lucidity,  "what  I 
came  to  see  you  for  two  months  ago."  He  was  on 
the  point  of  breaking  in  to  declare  that  the  reach  of 

104 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

his  intelligence  at  the  juncture  of  which  she  spoke  had 
been  quite  beyond  expression;  but  he  checked  himself 
in  time,  as  it  would  strike  her  but  as  a  vague  weak  effort 
to  make  exactly  the  distinction  that  "she  held  cheap. 
No,  he  wouldn't  give  Jane  away  now — he'd  suffer  any 
thing  instead;  the  taste  of  what  he  should  have  to 
suffer  was  already  there  on  his  lips:  it  came  over  him, 
to  the  strangest  effect  of  desolation,  of  desolation  made 
certain,  that  they  should  have  lost  Mora  for  ever,  and 
that  this  present  -  scant  passage  must  count  for  them 
as  her  form  of  rupture.  Jane  had  treated  her  the 
other  day — treated  her,  that  is,  through  Walter  Pud- 
dick,  who  would  have  been,  when  all  was  said,  a 
faithful  agent — to  their  form,  their  form  save  on  the 
condition  attached,  much  too  stiff  a  one,  no  doubt; 
so  that  he  was  actually  having  the  extraordinary  girl's 
answer.  What  they  thought  of  her  was  that  she  was 
Walter  Puddick's  mistress — the  only  difference  be 
tween  them  being  that  whereas  her  aunt  fixed  the  char 
acter  upon  her  as  by  the  act  of  tying  a  neatly  inscribed 
luggage-tag  to  a  bandbox,  he  himself  flourished  about 
with  his  tag  in  his  hand  and  a  portentous  grin  for 
what  he  could  do  with  it  if  he  would.  She  brushed 
aside  alike,  however,  vulgar  label  and  bewildered  for 
mula;  she  but  took  Jane's  message  as  involving  an 
insult,  and  if  she  treated  him,  as  a  participant,  with 
any  shade  of  humanity,  it  was  indeed  that  she  was  the 
good  creature  for  whom  she  had  a  moment  ago  claimed 
credit.  Even  under  the  sense  of  so  supreme  a  pang 

I05 


THE   FINER  GRAIN 

poor  Traffle  could  value  his  actual,  his  living,  his  won 
derful  impression,  rarest  treasure  of  sense,  as  what  the 
whole  history  would  most  have  left  with  him.  It  was 
all  he  should  have  of  her  in  the  future — the  mere  mem 
ory  of  these  dreadful  minutes  in  so  noble  a  place, 
minutes  that  were  shining  easy  grace  on  her  part  and 
helpless  humiliation  on  his;  wherefore,  tragically  but 
instinctively,  he  gathered  in,  as  for  preservation,  every 
grain  of  the  experience.  That  was  it;  they  had  given 
her,  without  intending  it,  still  wider  wings  of  freedom; 
the  clue,  the  excuse,  the  pretext,  whatever  she  might 
call  it,  for  shaking  off  any  bond  that  had  still  incom 
moded  her.  She  was  spreading  her  wings — that  was 
what  he  saw — as  if  she  hovered,  rising  and  rising,  like 
an  angel  in  a  vision;  it  was  the  picture  that  he  might, 
if  he  chose,  or  mightn't,  make  Jane,  on  his  return,  sit 
up  to.  Truths,  these,  that  for  our  interest  in  him,  or 
for  our  grasp  of  them,  press  on  us  in  succession,  but 
that  within  his  breast  were  quick  and  simultaneous; 
so  that  it  was  virtually  without  a  wait  he  heard  her  go 
on.  "  Do  try — that's  really  all  I  want  to  say — to  keep 
hold  of  my  husband." 

"Your  husband — ?"     He  did  gape. 

She  had  the  oddest  charming  surprise — her  nearest 
approach  to  familiarity.  "Walter  Puddick.  Don't 
you  know  I'm  married?"  And  then  as  for  the  life  of 
him  he  still  couldn't  but  stare:  "Hasn't  he  told  you?" 

"Told  us?    Why,  we  haven't  seen  him " 

"Since  the  day  you  so  put  the  case  to  him?  Oh,  I 
1 06 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

should  have  supposed — !"  She  would  have  supposed, 
obviously,  that  he  might  in  some  way  have  communi 
cated  the  fact;  but  she  clearly  hadn't  so  much  as  assured 
herself  of  it.  "Then  there  exactly  he  is — he  doesn't 
seem,  poor  dear,  to  know  what  to  do."  And  she 
had  on  his  behalf,  apparently,  a  moment  of  beauti 
ful  anxious,  yet  at  the  same  time  detached  and 
all  momentary  thought.  "That's  just  then  what  I 
mean." 

"My  dear  child,"  Traffic  gasped,  "what  on  earth 
do  you  mean?" 

"Well" — and  she  dropped  for  an  instant  compara 
tively  to  within  his  reach — "that  it's  where  you  can 
come  in.  Where  in  fact,  as  I  say,  I  quite  wish  you 
would!" 

All  his  wondering  attention  for  a  moment  hung 
upon  her.  "Do  you  ask  me,  Mora,  to  do  something 
for  you?" 

"Yes" — and  it  was  as  if  no  "good  creature"  had 
ever  been  so  beautiful,  nor  any  beautiful  creature  ever 
so  good — "to  make  him  your  care.  To  see  that  he 
does  get  it." 

"Get  it?"  Traffic  blankly  echoed. 

"  Why,  what  you  promised  him.     My  aunt's  money." 

He  felt  his  countenance  an  exhibition.  "  She  prom 
ised  it,  Mora,  to  you." 

"If  I  married  him,  yes — because  I  wasn't  fit  for  her 
to  speak  to  till  I  should.  But  if  I'm  now  proudly 

Mrs.  Puddick !" 

107 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  had  already,  however,  as  with  an  immense  re 
vulsion,  a  long  jump,  taken  her  up:  "You  are,  you 
are — ?"  He  gaped  at  the  difference  it  made  and 
in  which  then,  immensely,  they  seemed  to  recover  her. 

"  Before  all  men — and  the  Registrar." 

"The  Registrar?"  he  again  echoed;  so  that,  with 
another  turn  of  her  humour,  it  made  her  lift  her  eye 
brows  at  him. 

"You  mean  it  doesn't  hold  if  thafs  the  way ?" 

"It  holds,  Mora,  I  suppose,  any  way — that  makes 
a  real  marriage.  It  is,"  he  hopefully  smiled,  "real?" 

"Could  anything  be  more  real,"  she  asked,  "than 
to  have  become  such  a  thing?" 

"Walter  Puddick's  wife?"  He  kept  his  eyes  on 
her  pleadingly.  "Surely,  Mora,  it's  a  good  thing- 
clever  and  charming  as  he  is."  Now  that  Jane  had 
succeeded  his  instinct,  of  a  sudden,  was  to  back  her 
up. 

Mrs.  Puddick's  face — and  the  fact  was  it  was  strange, 
in  the  light  of  her  actual  aspect,  to  think  of  her  and 
name  her  so — showed,  however,  as  ready  a  disposition. 
"If  he's  as  much  as  that  then  why  were  you  so  shocked 
by  my  relations  with  him?" 

He  panted — he  cast  about.  'Why,  we  didn't  doubt 
of  his  distinction — of  what  it  was  at  any  rate  likely 
to  become." 

"You  only  doubted  of  mine?"  she  asked  with  her 
harder  look. 

He  threw  up  helpless  arms,  he  dropped  them  while 
108 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

he  gazed  at  her.  "It  doesn't  seem  to  me  possible  any 
one  can  ever  have  questioned  your  gift  for  doing  things 
in  your  own  way.  And  if  you're  now  married,"  he 
added  with  his  return  of  tentative  presumption  and 
his  strained  smile,  "your  own  way  opens  out  for  you, 
doesn't  it?  as  never  yet." 

Her  eyes,  on  this,  held  him  a  moment,  and  he 
couldn't  have  said  now  what  was  in  them.  "I  think 
it  does.  I'm  seeing,"  she  said — "I  shall  see.  Only" 
— she  hesitated  but  for  an  instant — "for  that  it's  nec 
essary  you  shall  look  after  him." 

They  stood  there  face  to  face  on  it — during  a  pause 
that,  lighted  by  her  radiance,  gave  him  time  to  take 
from  her,  somehow,  larger  and  stranger  things  than 
either  might  at  all  intelligibly  or  happily  have  named. 
"Do  you  ask  it  of  me?" 

"I  ask  it  of  you,"  said  Mrs.  Puddick  after  a  wait 
that  affected  him  as  giving  his  contribution  to  her 
enjoyment  of  that  title  as  part  of  her  reason. 

He  held  out,  however — contribution  or  no  contribu 
tion — another  moment.  "  Do  you  beg  me  very  hard  ?  " 

Once  more  she  hung  fire — but  she  let  him  have  it. 
"I  beg  you  very  hard." 

It  made  him  turn  pale.  "Thank  you,"  he  said; 
and  it  was  as  if  now  he  didn't  care  what  monstrous 
bargain  he  passed  with  her — which  was  fortunate,  for 
that  matter,  since,  when  she  next  spoke,  the  quantity 
struck  him  as  looming  large. 

"I  want  to  be  free." 

109 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"How  can  you  not?"  said  Sidney  Traffic,  feeling, 
to  the  most  extraordinary  tune,  at  one  and  the  same 
time  both  sublime  and  base;  and  quite  vague,  as  well 
as  indifferent,  as  to  which  character  prevailed. 

"But  I  don't  want  him,  you  see,  to  suffer." 

Besides  the  opportunity  that  this  spread  before  him, 
he  could  have  blessed  her,  could  have  embraced  her, 
for  "you  see."  "Well,  I  promise  you  he  sha'n't  suffer 
if  I  can  help  it." 

"Thank  you,"  she  said  in  a  manner  that  gave  him, 
if  possible,  even  greater  pleasure  yet,  showing  him  as 
it  did,  after  all,  what  an  honest  man  she  thought  him. 
He  even  at  that  point  had  his  apprehension  of  the  queer- 
ness  of  the  engagement  that,  as  an  honest  man,  he  was 
taking — the  engagement,  since  she  so  "wanted  to  be 
free,"  to  relieve  her,  so  far  as  he  devotedly  might,  of 
any  care  hampering  this  ideal;  but  his  perception  took 
a  tremendous  bound  as  he  noticed  that  their  interview 
had  within  a  moment  become  exposed  to  observation. 
A  reflected  light  in  Mora's  face,  caught  from  the  quar 
ter  behind  him,  suddenly  so  advised  him  and  caused 
him  to  turn,  with  the  consequence  of  his  seeing  a  gen 
tleman  in  the  doorway  by  which  he  had  entered — a 
gentleman  in  the  act  of  replacing  the  hat  raised  to 
salute  Mrs.  Puddick  and  with  an  accompanying  smile 
still  vivid  in  a  clear,  fresh,  well-featured  face.  Every 
thing  took  for  Sidney  Traffic  a  sharper  sense  from  this 
apparition,  and  he  had,  even  while  the  fact  of  the 
nature  of  his  young  friend's  business  there,  the  keeping 

no 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

of  an  agreeable  appointment  in  discreet  conditions, 
stood  out  for  him  again  as  in  its  odd  insolence  of  seren 
ity  and  success,  the  consciousness  that  whatever  his 
young  friend  was  doing,  whatever  she  was  "up  to," 
he  was  now  quite  as  much  in  the  act  of  backing  her 
as  the  gentlemen  in  the  doorway,  a  slightly  mature, 
but  strikingly  well-dressed,  a  pleasantly  masterful-look 
ing  gentleman,  a  haunter  of  the  best  society,  one  could 
be  sure,  was  waiting  for  him  to  go.  Mora  herself, 
promptly,  had  that  apprehension,  and  conveyed  it  to 
him,  the  next  thing,  in  words  that  amounted,  with 
their  sweet  conclusive  look,  to  a  decent  dismissal. 
"Here's  what's  of  real  importance  to  me,"  she  seemed 
to  say;  "so,  though  I  count  on  you,  I  needn't  keep  you 
longer."  But  she  took  time  in  fact  just  to  revert. 
"I've  asked  him  to  go  to  you;  and  he  will,  I'm  sure, 
he  will:  by  which  you'll  have  your  chance,  don't  fear! 
Good-bye."  She  spoke  as  if  this  "chance"  were  what 
he  would  now  at  once  be  most  yearning  for;  and  thus 
it  was  that,  while  he  stayed  but  long  enough  to  let  his 
eyes  move  again  to  the  new,  the  impatient  and  dis 
tinctly  "smart,"  yes,  unmistakably,  this  time,  not  a 
bit  Bohemian  candidate  for  her  attention,  and  then 
let  them  come  back  to  herself  as  for  some  grasp  of 
the  question  of  a  relation  already  so  developed,  there 
might  have  hung  itself  up  there  the  prospect  of  an  in 
finite  future  of  responsibility  about  Walter  Puddick— 
if  only  as  a  make-weight  perhaps  to  the  extinction  of 
everything  else.  When  he  had  turned  his  back  and 

in 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

begun  humbly  to  shuffle,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  through 
a  succession  of  shining  rooms  where  the  walls  bristled 
with  eyes  that  watched  him  for  mockery,  his  sense 
was  of  having  seen  the  last  of  Mora  as  completely  as 
if  she  had  just  seated  herself  in  the  car  of  a  rising  bal 
loon  that  would  never  descend  again  to  earth. 


VI 

IT  was  before  that  aspect  of  the  matter,  at  any  rate, 
that  Sidney  Traffic  made  a  retreat  which  he  would 
have  had  to  regard  as  the  most  abject  act  of  his  life 
hadn't  he  just  savingly  been  able  to  regard  it  as  the 
most  lucid.  The  aftertaste  of  that  quality  of  an  intel 
ligence  in  it  sharp  even  to  soreness  was  to  remain  with 
him,  intensely,  for  hours — to  the  point  in  fact  (which 
says  all)  of  rendering  necessary  a  thoughtful  return  to 
his  club  rather  than  a  direct  invocation  of  the  society 
of  his  wife.  He  ceased,  for  the  rest  of  the  day  there, 
to  thresh  about;  that  phase,  sensibly,  was  over  for  him; 
he  dropped  into  a  deep  chair,  really  exhausted,  quite 
spent,  and  in  this  posture  yielded  to  reflections  too 
grave  for  accessory  fidgets.  They  were  so  grave,  or 
were  at  least  so  interesting,  that  it  was  long  since  he 
had  been  for  so  many  hours  without  thinking  of  Jane 
—of  whom  he  didn't  even  dream  after  he  had  at  last 
inevitably,  reacting  from  weeks  of  tension  that  were 
somehow  ended  for  ever,  welcomed  a  deep  foodless 
doze  which  held  him  till  it  was  time  to  order  tea.  He 

112 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

woke  to  partake,  still  meditatively,  of  that  repast — yet, 
though  late  the  hour  and  quite  exceptional  the  length 
of  his  absence,  with  his  domestic  wantonness  now  all 
gone  and  no  charm  in  the  thought  of  how  Jane  would 
be  worried.  He  probably  shouldn't  be  wanton,  it  struck 
him,  ever  again  in  his  life;  that  tap  had  run  dry — 
had  suffered  an  immense,  a  conclusive  diversion  from 
the  particular  application  of  its  flow  to  Jane. 

This  truth  indeed,  I  must  add,  proved  of  minor  rel 
evance  on  his  standing  before  that  lady,  in  the  Wim 
bledon  drawing-room,  considerably  after  six  o'clock  had 
struck,  and  feeling  himself  in  presence  of  revela 
tions  prepared  not  only  to  match,  but  absolutely  to 
ignore  and  override,  his  own.  He  hadn't  put  it  to 
himself  that  if  the  pleasure  of  stretching  her  on  the 
rack  appeared  suddenly  to  have  dropped  for  him  this 
was  because  "it" — by  which  he  would  have  meant 
everything  else — was  too  serious;  but  had  he  done  so 
he  would  at  once  have  indulged  in  the  amendment 
that  he  himself  certainly  was.  His  wife  had  in  any 
case  risen  from  the  rack,  the  "bed  of  steel"  that,  in 
the  form  of  her  habitual,  her  eternal,  her  plaintive, 
aggressive  sofa,  had  positively  a  pushed-back  and  rele 
gated  air — an  air  to  the  meaning  of  which  a  tea-ser 
vice  that  fairly  seemed  to  sprawl  and  that  even  at  such 
an  hour  still  almost  unprecedentedly  lingered,  added 
the  very  accent  of  recent  agitations.  He  hadn't  been 
able  not  to  consult  himself  a  little  as  to  the  strength  of 
the  dose,  or  as  to  the  protraction  of  the  series  of  doses, 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

in  which  he  should  administer  the  squeezed  fruit,  the 
expressed  and  tonic  liquor,  of  his  own  adventure;  but 
the  atmosphere  surrounding  Jane  herself  was  one  in 
which  he  felt  questions  of  that  order  immediately  drop. 
The  atmosphere  surrounding  Jane  had  been,  in  fine, 
on  no  occasion  that  he  could  recall,  so  perceptibly 
thick,  so  abruptly  rich,  so  charged  with  strange  aromas; 
he  could  really  almost  have  fancied  himself  snuff  up 
from  it  a  certain  strength  of  transient  tobacco,  the 
trace  of  a  lately  permitted  cigarette  or  two  at  the  best 
— rarest  of  accidents  and  strangest  of  discords  in  that 
harmonious  whole.  Had  she,  gracious  goodness,  been 
smoking  with  somebody? — a  possibility  not  much  less 
lurid  than  this  conceived  extravagance  of  the  tolerated, 
the  independent  pipe. 

Yes,  absolutely,  she  eyed  him  through  a  ranker  me 
dium  than  had  ever  prevailed  between  them  by  any 
perversity  of  his;  eyed  him  quite  as  if  prepared,  in 
regular  tit-for-tat  fashion,  to  stretch  him,  for  a  change, 
on  his  back,  to  let  him  cool  his  heels  in  that  posture 
while  she  sauntered  in  view  pointedly  enough  for  him 
to  tell  her  how  he  liked  it.  Something  had  happened 
to  her  in  his  absence  that  made  her  quite  indifferent,  in 
other  words,  to  what  might  have  happened  to  any  one 
else  at  all;  and  so  little  had  he  to  fear  asperity  on  the 
score  of  his  selfish  day  off  that  she  didn't  even  see  the 
advantage  to  her,  for  exasperation  of  his  curiosity,  of 
holding  him  at  such  preliminary  arm's-length  as  would 
be  represented  by  a  specious  "scene."  She  would 

114 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

have  liked  him,  he  easily  recognized,  to  burst  with 
curiosity,  or,  better  still,  to  grovel  with  it,  before  she 
should  so  much  as  throw  him  a  sop;  but  just  this  art 
less  pride  in  her  it  was  that,  by  the  very  candour  of  its 
extravagance,  presently  helped  him  to  a  keen  induc 
tion.  He  had  only  to  ask  himself  what  could  have 
occurred  that  would  most  of  all  things  conduce  to  puf 
fing  her  up  with  triumph,  and  then  to  reflect  that, 
thoroughly  to  fill  that  bill,  as  who  should  say,  she  must 
have  had  a  contrite  call  from  Mora.  He  knew  indeed, 
consummately,  how  superior  a  resource  to  morbid  con 
trition  that  young  woman  was  actually  cultivating;  in 
accordance  with  which  the  next  broadest  base  for  her 
exclusive  command  of  the  situation — and  she  clearly 
claimed  nothing  less — would  be  the  fact  that  Walter 
Puddick  had  been  with  her  and  that  she  had  had  him 
(and  to  the  tune  of  odd  revelry  withal  to  which  their 
disordered  and  unremoved  cups  glaringly  testified)  all 
to  herself.  Such  an  interview  with  him  as  had  so  up 
lifted  her  that  she  distractedly  had  failed  to  ring  for 
the  parlour-maid,  with  six  o'clock  ebbing  in  strides — 
this  did  tell  a  story,  Traffic  ruefully  recognised,  with 
which  it  might  well  verily  yet  be  given  her  to  work  on 
him.  He  was  promptly  to  feel,  none  the  less,  how  he 
carried  the  war  across  her  border,  poor  superficial 
thing,  when  he  decided  on  the  direct  dash  that  showed 
her  she  had  still  to  count  with  him. 

He  didn't  offer  her,  as  he  looked  about,  the  mere 
obvious  "I  see  you've  had  visitors,  or  a  visitor,  and 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

have  smoked  a  pipe  with  them  and  haven't  bored 
yourself  the  least  mite" — he  broke  straight  into:  "He 
has  come  out  here  again  then,  the  wretch,  and  you've 
done  him  more  justice?  You've  done  him  a  good 
deal,  my  dear,"  he  laughed  in  the  grace  of  his  advan 
tage,  "if  you've  done  him  even  half  as  much  as  he 
appears  to  have  done  your  tea-table!"  For  this  the 
quick  flash-light  of  his  imagination — that's  what  it 
was  for  her  to  have  married  an  imaginative  man — 
was  just  the  drop  of  a  flying-machine  into  her  castle 
court  while  she  stood  on  guard  at  the  gate.  She  gave 
him  a  harder  look,  and  he  feared  he  might  kindle  by 
too  great  an  ease — as  he  was  far  from  prematurely 
wishing  to  do — her  challenge  of  his  own  experience. 
Her  flush  of  presumption  turned  in  fact,  for  the  in 
stant,  to  such  a  pathetically  pale  glare  that,  before  he 
knew  it,  conscious  of  his  resources  and  always  coming 
characteristically  round  to  indulgence  as  soon  as  she 
at  all  gave  way,  he  again  magnanimously  abdicated. 
"He  came  to  say  it's  no  use?"  he  went  on,  and  from 
that  moment  knew  himself  committed  to  secrecy.  It 
had  tided  him  over  the  few  seconds  of  his  danger — that 
of  Jane's  demanding  of  him  what  he  had  been  up  to. 
He  didn't  want  to  be  asked,  no;  and  his  not  being  asked 
guarded  his  not — yes — positively  lying;  since  what 
most  of  all  now  filled  his  spirit  was  that  he  shouldn't 
himself  positively  have  to  speak.  His  not  doing  so 
would  be  his  keeping  something  all  to  himself — as 
Jane  would  have  liked,  for  the  six-and-a-half  minutes 

116 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

of  her  strained,  her  poor  fatuous  chance,  to  keep  her 
passage  with  Puddick;  or  to  do  this,  in  any  case,  till 
he  could  feel  her  resist  what  would  certainly  soon  pre 
ponderantly  make  for  her  wish  to  see  him  stare  at  her 
producible  plum.  It  wasn't,  moreover,  that  he  could 
on  his  own  side  so  fully  withstand  wonder;  the  wonder 
of  this  new  singular  ground  of  sociability  between  per 
sons  hitherto  seeing  so  little  with  the  same  eyes.  There 
were  things  that  fitted — fitted  somehow  the  fact  of  the 
young  man's  return,  and  he  could  feel  in  his  breast 
pocket,  when  it  came  to  that,  the  presence  of  the  very 
key  to  almost  any  blind  or  even  wild  motion,  as  a  sign 
of  trouble,  on  poor  Puddick' s  part;  but  what  and  where 
was  the  key  to  the  mystery  of  Jane's  sudden  pride  in 
his  surely  at  the  best  very  queer  communication  ?  The 
eagerness  of  this  pride  it  was,  at  all  events,  that  after 
a  little  so  worked  as  to  enable  him  to  breathe  again 
for  his  own  momentarily  menaced  treasure.  "  They're 
married — they've  been  married  a  month;  not  a  bit  as 
one  would  have  wished,  or  by  any  form  decent  people 
recognise,  but  with  the  effect,  at  least,  he  tells  me,  that 
she's  now  legally  his  wife  and  he  legally  her  husband, 
so  that  neither  can  marry  any  one  else,  and  that — 

and  that " 

"And  that  she  has  taken  his  horrid  name,  under  our 
pressure,  in  exchange  for  her  beautiful  one — the  one 
that  so  fitted  her  and  that  we  ourselves,  when  all  was 
said,  did  like  so  to  keep  repeating,  in  spite  of  every 
thing,  you  won't  deny,  for  the  pleasant  showy  thing, 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

compared  with  our  own  and  most  of  our  friends',  it 
was  to  have  familiarly  about?"  He  took  her  up  with 
this,  as  she  had  faltered  a  little  over  the  other  sources 
of  comfort  provided  for  them  by  the  union  so  cele 
brated;  in  addition  to  which  his  ironic  speech  gained 
him  time  for  the  less  candid,  and  thereby  more  cyni 
cally  indulgent,  profession  of  entire  surprise.  And  he 
immediately  added:  " They've  gone  in  for  the  mere 
civil  marriage?" 

"  She  appears  to  have  consented  to  the  very  least  of 
one  that  would  do:  they  looked  in  somewhere,  at  some 
dingy  office,  jabbered  a  word  or  two  to  a  man  without 
h's  and  with  a  pen  behind  his  ear,  signed  their  names, 
and  then  came  out  as  good  as  you  and  me;  very  much 
as  you  and  I  the  other  day  sent  off  that  little  postal- 
packet  to  Paris  from  our  grocer's  back-shop." 

Traffic  showed  his  interest — he  took  in  the  news. 
"Well,  you  know,  you  didn't  make  Church  a  condi 
tion." 

"No — fortunately  not.  I  was  clever  enough,"  Jane 
bridled,  "  for  that." 

She  had  more  for  him,  her  manner  showed — she  had 
that  to  which  the  bare  fact  announced  was  as  nothing ; 
but  he  saw  he  must  somehow,  yes,  pay  by  knowing 
nothing  more  than  he  could  catch  at  by  brilliant  guesses. 
That  had  after  an  instant  become  a  comfort  to  him: 
it  would  legitimate  dissimulation,  just  as  this  recognised 
necessity  would  make  itself  quickly  felt  as  the  mere 
unregarded  underside  of  a  luxury.  "And  they're  at 

1x8 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

all  events,  I  take  it,"  he  went  on,  "  sufficiently  tied  to 
be  divorced." 

She  kept  him — but  only  for  a  moment.  "  Quite  suffi 
ciently,  I  gather;  and  that,"  she  said,  "may  come." 

She  made  him,  with  it,  quite  naturally  start.  "Are 
they  thinking  of  it  already?" 

She  looked  at  him  another  instant  hard,  as  with  the 
rich  expression  of  greater  stores  of  private  knowledge 
than  she  could  adapt  all  at  once  to  his  intelligence. 
"You've  no  conception — not  the  least! — of  how  he 
feels." 

Her  husband  hadn't  hereupon,  he  admitted  to  him 
self,  all  artificially  to  gape.  "Of  course  I  haven't, 
love."  Now  that  he  had  decided  not  to  give  his  own 
observation  away — and  this  however  Puddick  might 
"feel" — he  should  find  it  doubtless  easy  to  be  affection 
ate.  "But  he  has  been  telling  you  all  about  it?" 

"He  has  been  here  nearly  two  hours — as  you  of 
course,  so  far  as  that  went,  easily  guessed.  Nominally 
—at  first — he  had  come  out  to  see  you;  but  he  asked 
for  me  on  finding  you  absent,  and  when  I  had  come  in 
to  him  seemed  to  want  nothing  better " 

"Nothing  better  than  to  stay  and  stay,  Jane?"  he 
smiled  as  he  took  her  up.  "Why  in  the  world  should 
he?  What  I  ask  myself,"  Traffic  went  on,  "is  simply 
how  in  the  world  you  yourself  could  bear  it."  She 
turned  away  from  him,  holding  him  now,  she  judged, 
in  a  state  of  dependence;  she  reminded  him  even  of 
himself,  at  similar  moments  of  her  own  asservissement, 

119 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

when  he  turned  his  back  upon  her  to  walk  about  and 
keep  her  unsatisfied;  an  analogy  markedly  perceptible 
on  her  pausing  a  moment  as  under  her  first  impression 
of  the  scattered  tea-things  and  then  ringing  to  have 
them  attended  to.  Their  domestic,  retarded  Rebecca, 
almost  fiercely  appeared,  and  her  consequent  cold  pres 
ence  in  the  room  and  inevitably  renewed  return  to  it, 
by  the  open  door,  for  several  minutes,  drew  out  an 
interval  during  which  he  felt  nervous  again  lest  it 
should  occur  to  his  wife  to  wheel  round  on  him  with  a 
question.  She  did  nothing  of  the  sort,  fortunately; 
she  was  as  stuffed  with  supersessive  answers  as  if  she 
were  the  latest  number  of  a  penny  periodical:  it  was 
only  a  matter  still  of  his  continuing  to  pay  his  penny. 
She  wasn't,  moreover,  his  attention  noted,  trying  to  be 
portentous;  she  was  much  rather  secretly  and  perversely 
serene — the  basis  of  which  condition  did  a  little  tax 
his  fancy.  What  on  earth  had  Puddick  done  to  her — 
since  he  hadn't  been  able  to  bring  her  out  Mora — that 
had  made  her  distinguishably  happier,  beneath  the 
mere  grimness  of  her  finally  scoring  at  home,  than  she 
had  been  for  so  many  months?  The  best  she  could 
have  learned  from  him — Sidney  might  even  at  this 
point  have  staked  his  life  upon  it — wouldn't  have  been 
that  she  could  hope  to  make  Mrs.  Puddick  the  centre 
of  a  grand  rehabilitative  tea-party.  "Why  then,"  he 
went  on  again,  "if  they  were  married  a  month  ago  and 
he  was  so  ready  to  stay  with  you  two  hours,  hadn't  he 
come  sooner?" 

120 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

"He  didn't  come  to  tell  me  they  were  married — not 
on  purpose  for  that,"  Jane  said  after  a  little  and  as  if 
the  fact  itself  were  scarce  more  than  a  trifle — compared 
at  least  with  others  she  was  possessed  of,  but  that  she 
didn't  yet  mention. 

"Well"— Traffic  frankly  waited  now— "what  in  the 
world  did  he  come  to  tell  you?" 

She  made  no  great  haste  with  it.     "His  fears." 

"What  fears — at  present?"  he  disingenuously  asked. 

"  'At  present?'  Why,  it's  just  'at  present'  that  he 
feels  he  has  got  to  look  out."  Yes,  she  was  distinctly, 
she  was  strangely  placid  about  it.  "It's  worse  to  have 
to  have  them  now  that  she's  his  wife,  don't  you  under 
stand?"  she  pursued  as  if  he  were  really  almost  begin 
ning  to  try  her  patience.  "His  difficulties  aren't  over," 
she  nevertheless  condescended  further  to  mention. 

She  was  irritating,  decidedly;  but  he  could  always 
make  the  reflection  that  if  she  had  been  truly  appointed 
to  wear  him  out  she  would  long  since  have  done  so. 
"What  difficulties,"  he  accordingly  continued,  "are 
you  talking  about?" 

"Those  my  splendid  action — for  he  grants  perfectly 
that  it  is  and  will  remain  splendid — have  caused  for 
him."  But  her  calmness,  her  positive  swagger  of  com 
placency  over  it,  was  indeed  amazing. 

"Do  you  mean  by  your  having  so  forced  his  hand?" 
Traffle  had  now  no  hesitation  in  risking. 

"By  my  having  forced  hers"  his  wife  presently 
returned.  "By  my  glittering  bribe,  as  he  calls  it." 

121 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  saw  in  a  moment  how  she  liked  what  her  visitor 
had  called  things;  yet  it  made  him,  himself,  but  want 
more.  "She  found  your  bribe  so  glittering  that  she 
couldn't  resist  it?" 

"  She  couldn't  resist  it."  And  Jane  sublimely  stalked. 
"  She  consented  to  perform  the  condition  attached — as 
I've  mentioned  to  you — for  enjoying  it." 

Traffic  artfully  considered.  "If  she  has  met  you  on 
that  arrangement  where  do  the  difficulties  come  in?" 

Jane  looked  at  him  a  moment  with  wonderful  eyes. 
"For  me?  They  don't  come  in!"  And  she  again 
turned  her  back  on  him. 

It  really  tempted  him  to  permit  himself  a  certain 
impatience — which  in  fact  he  might  have  shown  hadn't 
he  by  this  time  felt  himself  more  intimately  interested 
in  Jane's  own  evolution  than  in  Mr.  Puddick's,  or 
even,  for  the  moment,  in  Mora's.  That  interest  min 
istered  to  his  art.  "You  must  tell  me  at  your  conve 
nience  about  yours,  that  is  about  your  apparently  feel 
ing  yourself  now  so  beautifully  able  to  sink  yours. 
What  I'm  asking  you  about  is  his — if  you've  put  them 
so  at  your  ease." 

"I  haven't  put  them  a  bit  at  their  ease!" — and  she 
was  at  him  with  it  again  almost  as  in  a  glow  of  triumph. 

He  aimed  at  all  possible  blankness.  "But  surely 
four  hundred  and  fifty  more  a  year !" 

"Four  hundred  and  fifty  more  is  nothing  to  her." 

"Then  why  the  deuce  did  she  marry  him  for  it? — 
since  she  apparently  couldn't  bring  herself  to  without  it." 

122 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

"She  didn't  marry  him  that  she  herself  should  get 
my  allowance — she  married  him  that  he  should." 

At  which  Traffic  had  a  bit  genuinely  to  wonder. 
"It  comes  at  any  rate  to  the  same  if  you  pay  it  to 
her." 

Nothing,  it  would  seem,  could  possibly  have  had  on 
Jane's  state  of  mind  a  happier  effect.  "I  sha'n't  pay 
it  to  her." 

Her  husband  could  again  but  stare.  "You  won't, 
dear?"  he  deprecated. 

"I  don't,"  she  nobly  replied.  And  then  as  at  last 
for  one  of  her  greater  cards:  "I  pay  it  to  him." 

"But  if  he  pays  it  to  her ?" 

"He  doesn't.    He  explains." 

Traffic  cast  about.     " Explains— a— to  Mora?" 

"Explains  to  me.  He  has"  she  almost  defiantly 
bridled,  "perfectly  explained." 

Her  companion  smiled  at  her.  "Ah,  that  then  is 
what  took  him  two  hours!"  He  went  on,  however, 
before  she  could  either  attenuate  or  amplify:  "It  must 
have  taken  him  that  of  course  to  arrange  with  you — 
as  I  understand? — for  his  monopolising  the  money?" 

She  seemed  to  notify  him  now  that  from  her  high 
command  of  the  situation  she  could  quite  look  down 
on  the  spiteful  sarcastic  touch.  "We  have  plenty  to 
arrange.  We  have  plenty  to  discuss.  We  shall  often 
— if  you  want  to  know — have  occasion  to  meet." 
After  which,  "Mora,"  she  quite  gloriously  brought 
forth,  "hates  me  worse  than  ever." 

123 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  opened  his  eyes  to  their  widest.  "For  settling 
on  her  a  substantial  fortune?" 

"For  having" — and  Jane  had  positively  a  cold  smile 
for  it — "believed  her  not  respectable." 

"Then  was  she?"  Traffic  gaped. 

It  did  turn  on  him  the  tables!  "Mr.  Puddick  con 
tinues  to  swear  it."  But  even  though  so  gracefully 
patient  of  him  she  remained  cold. 

"You  yourself,  however,  haven't  faith?" 

"No,"  said  Mrs.  Traffic. 

"In  his  word,  you  mean?" 

She  had  a  fine  little  wait.  "In  her  conduct.  In 
his  knowledge  of  it." 

Again  he  had  to  rise  to  it.     "With  other  persons?" 

"With  other  persons.     Even  then." 

Traffic  thought.     "But  even  when?" 

"Even  from  the  first,"  Jane  grandly  produced. 

"Oh,  oh,  oh!"  he  found  himself  crying  with  a  flush. 
He  had  had  occasion  to  colour  in  the  past  for  her  flat 
ness,  but  never  for  such  an  audacity  of  point.  Won 
derful,  all  round,  in  the  light  of  reflection,  seemed 
what  Mora  was  doing  for  them.  "It  won't  be  her 
husband,  at  all  events,  who  has  put  you  up  to  that!" 

She  took  this  in  as  if  it  might  have  been  roguishly 
insinuating  in  respect  to  her  own  wit — though  not,  as 
who  should  say,  to  make  any  great  use  of  it.  "It's 
what  I  read— 

"What  you  'read' — ?"  he  asked  as  she  a  little  hung 
fire. 

124 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

"Well,  into  the  past  that  from  far  back  so  troubled 
me.  I  had  plenty  to  tell  him ! "  she  surprisingly  went  on. 

"Ah,  my  dear,  to  the  detriment  of  his  own  wife?" 
our  friend  broke  out. 

It  earned  him,  however,  but  her  at  once  harder  and 
richer  look.  Clearly  she  was  at  a  height  of  satisfac 
tion  about  something — it  spread  and  spread  more  be 
fore  him.  "For  all  that  really,  you  know,  she  is  now 
his  wife!" 

He  threw  himself  amazedly  back.  "You  mean  she 
practically  isn't?"  And  then  as  her  eyes  but  appeared 
to  fill  it  out:  "Is  that  what  you've  been  having  from 
him? — and  is  that  what  we've  done?" 

She  looked  away  a  little — she  turned  off  again.  "  Of 
course  I've  wanted  the  full  truth — as  to  what  I've 
done." 

Our  friend  could  imagine  that,  at  strict  need;  but 
wondrous  to  him  with  it  was  this  air  in  her  as  of  the 
birth  of  a  new  detachment.  "What  you've  'done,'  it 
strikes  me,  might  be  a  little  embarrassing  for  us;  but 
you  speak  as  if  you  really  quite  enjoyed  it!" 

This  was  a  remark,  he  had  to  note,  by  which  she 
wasn't  in  the  least  confounded;  so  that  if  he  had  his 
impression  of  that  odd  novelty  in  her  to  which  allusion 
has  just  been  made,  it  might  indeed  have  been  quite  a 
new  Jane  who  now  looked  at  him  out  of  her  conscious 
eyes.  "He  likes  to  talk  to  me,  poor  dear." 

She  treated  his  observation  as  if  that  quite  met  it— 
which  couldn't  but  slightly  irritate  him;  but  he  hadn't 

125 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

in  the  least  abjured  self-control,  he  was  happy  to  feel, 
on  his  returning  at  once:  "And  you  like  to  talk  with 
him,  obviously — since  he  appears  so  beautifully  and 
quickly  to  have  brought  you  round  from  your  view  of 
him  as  merely  low." 

She  flushed  a  little  at  this  reminder,  but  it  scarcely 
pulled  her  up.  "I  never  thought  him  low" — she  made 
no  more  of  it  than  that;  "but  I  admit,"  she  quite  boldly 
smiled,  "that  I  did  think  him  wicked." 

"And  it's  now  your  opinion  that  people  can  be 
wicked  without  being  low?" 

Prodigious  really,  he  found  himself  make  out  while 
she  just  hesitated,  the  opinions  over  the  responsibility 
of  which  he  should  yet  see  her — and  all  as  a  conse 
quence  of  this  one  afternoon  of  his  ill-inspired  absence 
— ready  thus  unnaturally  to  smirk  at  him.  "It  de 
pends,"  she  complacently  brought  out,  "on  the 
kind." 

"On  the  kind  of  wickedness?" 

"Yes,  perhaps.  And"— it  didn't  at  all  baffle  her— 
"on  the  kind  of  people." 

"I  see.  It's  all,  my  dear,  I  want  to  get  at — for 
a  proper  understanding  of  the  extraordinary  somer 
sault  you  appear  to  have  turned.  Puddick  has  just 
convinced  you  that  his  immoralities  are  the  right 
ones?" 

"No,  love — nothing  will  ever  convince  me  that  any 
immoralities  deserve  that  name.  But  some,"  she  went 
on,  "only  seem  wrong  till  they're  explained." 

126 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

"And  those  are  the  ones  that,  as  you  say,  he  has 
been  explaining?"  Traffic  asked  with  a  glittering 
cheerful  patience. 

"He  has  explained  a  great  deal,  yes" — Jane  bore  up 
under  it;  "but  I  think  that,  by  the  opportunity  for  a 
good  talk  with  him,  I've  at  last  understood  even  more. 
We  weren't,  you  see,  before,"  she  obligingly  added, 
"in  his  confidence." 

"No,  indeed,"  her  husband  opined,  "we  could  scarce 
ly  be  said  to  be.  But  now  we  are,  and  it  makes  the 
difference?" 

"It  makes  the  difference  to  me,"  Jane  nobly  con 
tented  herself  with  claiming.  "If  I've  been  remiss, 
however,"  she  showed  herself  prepared  to  pursue,  "I 
must  make  it  up.  And  doubtless  I  have  been." 

"'Remiss,'"  he  stared,  "when  you're  in  full  enjoy 
ment  of  my  assent  to  our  making  such  sacrifices  for 
her?" 

She  gave  it,  in  her  superior  way,  a  moment's  thought. 
"I  don't  mean  remiss  in  act;  no,  that,  thank  goodness, 
we  haven't  been.  But  remiss  in  feeling,"  she  quite 
unbearably  discriminated. 

"Ah,  that,  par  exemple"  he  protested,  "I  deny  that 
I've  been  for  a  moment!" 

"No" — and  she  fairly  mused  at  him;  "you  seemed 
to  have  all  sorts  of  ideas;  while  I,"  she  conceded,  "had 
only  one,  which,  so  far  as  it  went,  was  good.  But  it 
didn't  go  far  enough." 

He  watched  her  a  moment.  "I  doubtless  don't 
127 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

know  what  idea  you  mean,"  he  smiled,  "but  how  far 
does  it  go  now?" 

She  hadn't,  with  her  preoccupied  eyes  on  him,  so 
much  as  noticed  the  ironic  ring  of  it.  "Well,  you'll 
see  for  yourself.  I  mustn't  abandon  him." 

"  Abandon  Puddick  ?  Who  the  deuce  then  ever  said 
you  must?" 

"Didn't  you  a  little,"  she  blandly  inquired,  "all 
the  while  you  were  so  great  on  our  not  '  interfer 
ing'?" 

"I  was  great — if  great  you  call  it — only,"  he  re 
turned,  "so  far  as  I  was  great  for  our  just  a  little  under 
standing." 

"Well,  what  I'm  telling  you  is  that  I  think  I  do  at 
present  just  a  little  understand." 

"And  doesn't  it  make  you  feel  just  a  little  badly?" 

"No" — she  serenely  shook  her  head;  "for  my  inten 
tion  was  so  good.  He  does  justice  now,"  she  explained, 
"to  my  intention;  or  he  will  very  soon — he  quite  let 
me  see  that,  and  it's  why  I'm  what  you  call  'happy.' 
With  which,"  she  wound  up,  "there's  so  much  more  I 
can  still  do.  There  are  bad  days,  you  see,  before 
him — and  then  he'll  have  only  me.  For  if  she  was 
respectable,"  Jane  proceeded,  reverting  as  imperturb- 
ably  to  their  question  of  a  while  back,  "she's  certainly 
not  nice  now." 

He'd  be  hanged,  Traffic  said  to  himself,  if  he 
wouldn't  look  at  her  hard.  "Do  you  mean  by  not 
coming  to  thank  you?"  And  then  as  she  but  signi- 

128 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

fied  by  a  motion  that  this  she  had  now  made  her  terms 
with:     "What  else  then  is  the  matter  with  her?" 

"The  matter  with  her,"  said  Jane  on  the  note  of 
high  deliberation  and  competence,  and  not  without  a 
certain  pity  for  his  own  want  of  light,  "the  matter  with 
her  is  that  she's  quite  making  her  preparations,  by 
what  he's  convinced,  for  leaving  him." 

"  Leaving  him  ?  " — he  met  it  with  treasures  of  surprise. 

These  were  nothing,  however,  he  could  feel,  to  the 
wealth  of  authority  with  which  she  again  gave  it  out. 
"Leaving  him." 

"A  month  after  marriage?" 

"A  month  after — their  form;  and  she  seems  to  think 
it  handsome,  he  says,  that  she  waited  the  month. 
That''  she  added,  "is  what  he  came  above  all  that  we 
should  know." 

He  took  in,  our  friend,  many  things  in  silence;  but 
he  presently  had  his  comment.  "We've  done  our  job 
then  to  an  even  livelier  tune  than  we  could  have  hoped!" 

Again  this  moral  of  it  all  didn't  appear  to  shock  her. 
"He  doesn't  reproach  me,"  she  wonderfully  said. 

"I'm  sure  it's  very  good  of  him  then!"  Traffic  cried. 

But  her  blandness,  her  mildness,  was  proof.  "My 
dear  Sidney,  Walter  is  very  good." 

She  brought  it  out  as  if  she  had  made,  quite  unaided, 
the  discovery;  though  even  this  perhaps  was  not  what 
he  most  stared  at.  "Do  you  call  him  Walter?" 

"Surely" — and  she  returned  surprise  for  surprise — 
"isn't  he  my  nephew?" 

129 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

Traffic  bethought  himself.  "You  recognise  the  Reg 
istrar  then  for  that" 

She  could  perfectly  smile  back.  "I  don't  know  that 
I  would  if  our  friend  weren't  so  interesting." 

It  was  quite  for  Sidney  Traffic,  at  this,  as  if  he  hadn't 
known  up  to  that  moment,  filled  for  him  with  her 
manner  of  intimating  her  reason,  what  sort  of  a  wife — 
for  coolness  and  other  things — he  rejoiced  in.  Really 
he  had  to  take  time — and  to  throw  himself,  while  he 
did  so,  into  pretences.  "The  Registrar?" 

"Don't  be  a  goose,  dear!" — she  showed  she  could 
humour  him  at  last;  and  it  was  perhaps  the  most  ex 
traordinary  impression  he  had  ever  in  his  life  received. 
"But  you'll  see,"  she  continued  in  this  spirit.  "I 
mean  how  I  shall  interest  you."  And  then  as  he  but 
seemed  to  brood  at  her:  "Interest  you,  I  mean,  in  my 
interest — for  I  sha'n't  content  myself,"  she  beautifully 
professed,  "with  your  simply  not  minding  it." 

"Minding  your  interest?"  he  frowned. 

"In  my  poor  ravaged,  lacerated,  pathetic  nephew. 
I  shall  expect  you  in  some  degree  to  share  it." 

"  Oh,  I'll  share  it  if  you  like,  but  you  must  remember 
how  little  I'm  responsible." 

She  looked  at  him  abysmally.  "No — it  was  mainly 
me.  He  brings  that  home  to  me,  poor  dear.  Oh,  he 
doesn't  scare  me!" — she  kept  it  up;  "and  I  don't  know 
that  I  want  him  to,  for  it  seems  to  clear  the  whole 
question,  and  really  to  ease  me  a  little,  that  he  should 
put  everything  before  me,  his  grievance  with  us,  I 

130 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

mean,  and  that  I  should  know  just  how  he  has  seen 
our  attitude,  or  at  any  rate  mine.  I  was  stupid  the 
other  day  when  he  came — he  saw  but  a  part  of  it  then. 
It's  settled,"  she  further  mentioned,  "that  I  shall  go 
to  him." 

"Go  to  him—?"  Traffic  blankly  echoed. 

"At  his  studio,  dear,  you  know,"  Jane  promptly 
supplied.  "I  want  to  see  his  work — for  we  had  some 
talk  about  that  too.  He  has  made  me  care  for  it." 

Her  companion  took  these  things  in — even  so  many 
of  them  as  there  now  seemed  to  be:  they  somehow  left 
him,  in  point  of  fact,  so  stranded.  "Why  not  call  on 
her  at  once?" 

"That  will  be  useless  when  she  won't  receive  me. 
Never,  never!"  said  Jane  with  a  sigh  so  confessedly 
superficial  that  her  husband  found  it  peculiarly  irri 
tating. 

"He  has  brought  that  'home'  to  you?"  he  conse 
quently  almost  jibed. 

She  winced  no  more,  however,  than  if  he  had  tossed 
her  a  flower.  "Ah,  what  he  has  made  me  realise  is 
that  if  he  has  definitely  lost  her,  as  he  feels,  so  we  our 
selves  assuredly  have,  for  ever  and  a  day.  But  he 
doesn't  mean  to  lose  sight  of  her,  and  in  that  way " 

"In  that  way?"— Traffic  waited. 

"Well,  1  shall  always  hear  whatever  there  may  be. 
And  there's  no  knowing,"  she  developed  as  with  an 
open  and  impartial  appetite,  "what  that  mayn't  come 
to." 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  turned  away — with  his  own  conception  of  this 
possible  expansive  quantity  and  a  sore  sense  of  how 
the  combinations  of  things  were  appointed  to  take 
place  without  his  aid  or  presence,  how  they  kept  failing 
to  provide  for  him  at  all.  It  was  his  old  irony  of  fate, 
which  seemed  to  insist  on  meeting  him  at  every  turn. 
Mora  had  testified  in  the  morning  to  no  further  use 
for  him  than  might  reside  in  his  making  her  shuffled- 
off  lover  the  benevolent  business  of  his  life;  but  even 
in  this  cold  care,  clearly,  he  was  forestalled  by  a  person 
to  whom  it  would  come  more  naturally.  It  was  by  his 
original  and  independent  measure  that  the  whole  case 
had  become  interesting  and  been  raised  above  the  level 
of  a  mere  vulgar  scandal;  in  spite  of  which  he  could 
now  stare  but  at  the  prospect  of  exclusion,  and  of  his 
walking  round  it,  through  the  coming  years — to  walk 
vaguely  round  and  round  announcing  itself  thus  at  the 
best  as  the  occupation  of  his  future — in  wider  and 
remoter  circles.  As  against  this,  for  warmth,  there 
would  nestle  in  his  breast  but  a  prize  of  memory,  the 
poor  little  secret  of  the  passage  at  the  Gallery  that  the 
day  had  bequeathed  him.  He  might  propose  to  hug 
this  treasure  of  consciousness,  to  make  it,  by  some 
ingenuity  he  couldn't  yet  forecast,  his  very  own;  only 
it  was  a  poor  thing  in  view  of  their  positive  privation, 
and  what  Jane  was  getting  out  of  the  whole  business— 
her  ingenuity  it  struck  him  he  could  quite  forecast — 
would  certainly  be  a  comparative  riot  of  sympathy. 
He  stood  with  his  hands  in  his  pockets  and  gazed  a  lit- 

132 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

tie,  very  sightlessly — that  is  with  an  other  than  ranging 
vision,  even  though  not  other  than  baffled  one  too— 
out  of  the  glimmering  square  of  the  window.  Then, 
however,  he  recalled  himself,  slightly  shook  himself, 
and  the  next  moment  had  faced  about  with  a  fresh 
dissimulation.  "If  you  talk  of  her  leaving  him,  and  he 
himself  comes  in  for  all  your  bounty,  what  then  is  she 
going  to  live  upon?" 

"On  her  wits,  he  thinks  and  fears;  on  her  beauty, 
on  her  audacity.  Oh,  it's  a  picture — !"  Jane  was 
now  quite  unshrinkingly  able  to  report  from  her  visitor. 
Traffic,  morally  fingering,  as  it  were,  the  mystic  medal 
under  his  shirt,  was  at  least  equally  qualified,  on  his 
side,  to  gloom  all  yearningly  at  her;  but  she  had  mean 
while  testified  further  to  her  consistent  command  of 
their  position.  "He  believes  her  to  be  more  than  ever 
— not  'respectable.'  " 

"How,  'more  than  ever,'  if  respectable  was  what 
she  was?" 

"It  was  what  she  wasn't!"  Jane  returned. 

He  had  a  prodigious  shrug — it  almost  eased  him  for 
the  moment  of  half  his  impatience.  "I  understood 
that  you  told  me  a  moment  ago  the  contrary." 

"Then  you  understood  wrong.  All  I  said  was  that 
he  says  she  was — but  that  I  don't  believe  him." 

He  wondered,  following.  "Then  how  does  he  come 
to  describe  her  as  less  so?" 

Jane  straightened  it  out — Jane  surpassed  herself. 
"He  doesn't  describe  her  as  less  so  than  she  'was' — I 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

only  put  her  at  that.  He" — oh,  she  was  candid  and 
clear  about  it! — "simply  puts  her  at  less  so  than  she 
might  be.  In  order,  don't  you  see,"  she  luminously 
reasoned,  "that  we  shall  have  it  on  our  conscience  that 
we  took  the  case  out  of  his  hands." 

"And  you  allowed  to  him  then  that  that's  how  we 
do  have  it?" 

To  this  her  face  lighted  as  never  yet.  "Why,  it's 
just  the  point  of  what  I  tell  you — that  I  feel  I  must." 

He  turned  it  over.     "But  why  so  if  you're  right?" 

She  brought  up  her  own  shoulders  for  his  density. 
"I  haven't  been  right.  I've  been  wrong." 

He  could  only  glare  about.  "In  holding  her  then 
already  to  have  fallen ?" 

"Oh  dear  no,  not  that!  In  having  let  it  work  me 
up.  Of  course  I  can  but  take  from  him  now,"  she 
elucidated,  "what  he  insists  on." 

Her  husband  measured  it.  "Of  course,  in  other 
words,  you  can  but  believe  she  was  as  bad  as  possible, 
and  yet  pretend  to  him  he  has  persuaded  you  of  the 
contrary?" 

"Exactly,  love — so  that  it  shall  make  us  worse.  As 
bad  as  he  wants  us,"  she  smiled. 

"In  order,"  Traffic  said  after  a  moment,  "that  he 
may  comfortably  take  the  money?" 

She  welcomed  this  gleam.  "In  order  that  he  may 
comfortably  take  it." 

He  could  but  gaze  at  her  again.  "You  have  ar 
ranged  it!" 

134 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

"  Certainly  I  have — and  that's  why  I'm  calm.  He 
considers,  at  any  rate,"  she  continued,  "that  it  will 
probably  be  Sir  Bruce.  I  mean  that  she'll  leave  him 
for." 

"And  who  in  the  world  is  Sir  Bruce?" 

She  consulted  her  store  of  impressions.  "Sir  Bruce 
Bagley,  Bart.,  I  think  he  said." 

Traffic  fitted  it  in  silence.  "A  soldier?"  he  then 
asked. 

"I'm  uncertain — but,  as  I  seem  to  remember,  a 
patron.  He  buys  pictures." 

Traffic  could  privately  imagine  it.  "And  that's  how 
she  knows  him?" 

Jane  allowed  for  his  simplicity.  "Oh,  how  she 
' knows'  people !" 

It  still  held  him,  however,  an  instant.  "What  sort 
of  a  type?" 

She  seemed  to  wonder  a  little  at  his  press  of  ques 
tions,  but  after  just  facing  it  didn't  pretend  to  more 
than  she  knew.  She  was,  on  this  basis  of  proper  rela 
tions  that  she  had  settled,  more  and  more  willing,  be 
sides,  to  oblige.  "I'll  find  out  for  you." 

It  came  in  a  tone  that  made  him  turn  off.  "Oh,  I 
don't  mind."  With  which  he  was  back  at  the  window. 

She  hovered — she  didn't  leave  him;  he  felt  her  there 
behind  him  as  if  she  had  noted  a  break  in  his  voice  or 
a  moisture  in  his  eyes — a  tribute  to  a  natural  pang  even 
for  a  not  real  niece.  He  wouldn't  renew  with  her 
again,  and  would  have  been  glad  now  had  she  quitted 


I 

THE  FINER  GRAIN 

him;  but  there  grew  for  him  during  the  next  moments 
the  strange  sense  that,  with  what  had  so  bravely  hap 
pened  for  her — to  the  point  of  the  triumph  of  display 
ing  it  to  him  inclusive — the  instinct  of  compassion 
worked  in  her;  though  whether  in  respect  of  the  com 
parative  solitude  to  which  her  duties  to  " Walter" 
would  perhaps  more  or  less  relegate  him,  or  on  the 
score  of  his  having  brought  home  to  him,  as  she  said, 
so  much  that  was  painful,  she  hadn't  yet  made  up  her 
mind.  This,  after  a  little,  however,  she  discreetly  did; 
she  decided  in  the  sense  of  consideration  for  his  nerves. 
She  lingered — he  felt  her  more  vaguely  about;  and  in 
the  silence  that  thus  lasted  between  them  he  felt  also, 
with  its  importance,  the  determination  of  their  life  for 
perhaps  a  long  time  to  come.  He  was  wishing  she'd 
go — he  was  wanting  not  then  again  to  meet  her  eyes; 
but  still  more  than  either  of  these  things  he  was  asking 
himself,  as  from  time  to  time  during  the  previous 
months  he  had  all  subtly  and  idly  asked,  what  would 
have  been  the  use,  after  all,  of  so  much  imagination  as 
constantly  worked  in  him.  Didn't  it  let  him  into 
more  deep  holes  than  it  pulled  him  out  of?  Didn't  it 
make  for  him  more  tight  places  than  it  saw  him  through  ? 
Or  didn't  it  at  the  same  time,  not  less,  give  him  all  to 
himself  a  life,  exquisite,  occult,  dangerous  and  sacred, 
to  which  everything  ministered  and  which  nothing  could 
take  away? 

He  fairly  lost  himself  in  that  aspect — which  it  was 
clear  only  the  vision  and  the  faculty  themselves  could 

136 


MORA  MONTRAVERS 

have  hung  there,  of  a  sudden,  so  wantonly,  before  him; 
and  by  the  moment  attention  for  nearer  things  had 
re-emerged  he  seemed  to  know  how  his  wife  had  inter 
preted  his  air  of  musing  melancholy  absence.  She 
had  dealt  with  it  after  her  own  fashion;  had  given  him 
a  moment  longer  the  benefit  of  a  chance  to  inquire  or 
appeal  afresh;  and  then,  after  brushing  him  good- 
humouredly,  in  point  of  fact  quite  gaily,  with  her  skirts, 
after  patting  and  patronising  him  gently  with  her  fin 
ger-tips,  very  much  as  he  had  patted  and  patronised 
Walter  Puddick  that  day  in  the  porch,  had  put  him  in 
his  place,  on  the  whole  matter  of  the  issue  of  their 
trouble,  or  at  least  had  left  him  in  it,  by  a  happy  last 
word.  She  had  judged  him  more  upset,  more  unable 
to  conclude  or  articulate,  about  Mora  and  Sir  Bruce, 
than  she,  with  her  easier  power  of  rebound,  had  been; 
and  her  final  wisdom,  indeed  her  final  tenderness, 
would  be  to  show  him  cheerful  and  helpful  mercy. 
"No  then,  I  see  I  mustn't  rub  it  in.  You  sha'n't  be 
worried.  I'll  keep  it  all  to  myself,  dear."  With  which 
she  would  have  floated  away — with  which  and  some 
other  things  he  was  sensibly,  relievingly  alone.  But 
he  remained  staring  out  at  the  approach  of  evening — 
and  it  was  of  the  other  things  he  was  more  and  more 
conscious  while  the  vague  grey  prospect  held  him. 
Even  while  he  had  looked  askance  in  the  greyness  at 
the  importunate  fiend  of  fancy  it  was  riding  him  again 
as  the  very  genius  of  twilight;  it  played  the  long  reach 
of  its  prompt  lantern  over  Sir  Bruce  Bagley,  the  patron 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

of  promising  young  lives.  He  wondered  about  Sir 
Bruce,  recalling  his  face  and  his  type  and  his  effect — 
his  effect,  so  immediate,  on  Mora;  wondered  how  he 
had  proceeded,  how  he  would  still  proceed,  how  far 
perhaps  even  they  had  got  by  that  time.  Lord,  the 
fun  some  people  did  have!  Even  Jane,  with  her  con 
scientious  new  care — even  Jane,  unmistakably,  was  in 
for  such  a  lot. 


138 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 


T  TE  had  been  out  but  once  since  his  arrival,  Mark 
-*•  -*•  Monteith;  that  was  the  next  day  after — he  had 
disembarked  by  night  on  the  previous;  then  everything 
had  come  at  once,  as  he  would  have  said,  everything 
had  changed.  He  had  got  in  on  Tuesday;  he  had  spent 
Wednesday  for  the  most  part  down  town,  looking  into 
the  dismal  subject  of  his  anxiety — the  anxiety  that, 
under  a  sudden  decision,  had  brought  him  across  the 
unfriendly  sea  at  mid-winter,  and  it  was  through  infor 
mation  reaching  him  on  Wednesday  evening  that  he 
had  measured  his  loss,  measured  above  all  his  pain. 
These  were  two  distinct  things,  he  felt,  and,  though 
both  bad,  one  much  worse  than  the  other.  It  wasn't 
till  the  next  three  days  had  pretty  well  ebbed,  in  fact, 
that  he  knew  himself  for  so  badly  wounded.  He  had 
waked  up  on  Thursday  morning,  so  far  as  he  had  slept 
at  all,  with  the  sense,  together,  of  a  blinding  New  York 
blizzard  and  of  a  deep  sore  inward  ache.  The  great 
white  savage  storm  would  have  kept  him  at  the  best 
within  doors,  but  his  stricken  state  was  by  itself  quite 
reason  enough. 

141 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  so  felt  the  blow  indeed,  so  gasped,  before  what 
had  happened  to  him,  at  the  ugliness,  the  bitterness, 
and,  beyond  these  things,  the  sinister  strangeness,  that, 
the  matter  of  his  dismay  little  by  little  detaching  and 
projecting  itself,  settling  there  face  to  face  with  him 
as  something  he  must  now  live  with  always,  he  might 
have  been  in  charge  of  some  horrid  alien  thing,  some 
violent,  scared,  unhappy  creature  whom  there  was 
small  joy,  of  a  truth,  in  remaining  with,  but  whose 
behaviour  wouldn't  perhaps  bring  him  under  notice, 
nor  otherwise  compromise  him,  so  long  as  he  should 
stay  to  watch  it.  A  young  jibbering  ape  of  one  of  the 
more  formidable  sorts,  or  an  ominous  infant  panther, 
smuggled  into  the  great  gaudy  hotel  and  whom  it 
might  yet  be  important  he  shouldn't  advertise,  couldn't 
have  affected  him  as  needing  more  domestic  attention. 
The  great  gaudy  hotel — The  Pocahontas,  but  carried 
out  largely  on  "Du  Barry"  lines — made  all  about  him, 
beside,  behind,  below,  above,  in  blocks  and  tiers  and 
superpositions,  a  sufficient  defensive  hugeness;  so  that, 
between  the  massive  labyrinth  and  the  New  York  weath 
er,  life  in  a  lighthouse  during  a  gale  would  scarce  have 
kept  him  more  apart.  Even  when  in  the  course  of 
that  worse  Thursday  it  had  occurred  to  him  for  vague 
relief  that  the  odious  certified  facts  couldn't  be  all  his 
misery,  and  that,  with  his  throat  and  a  probable  tem 
perature,  a  brush  of  the  epidemic,  which  was  for  ever 
brushing  him,  accounted  for  something,  even  then  he 
couldn't  resign  himself  to  bed  and  broth  and  dimness, 

142 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

but  only  circled  and  prowled  the  more  within  his  high 
cage,  only  watched  the  more  from  his  tenth  story  the 
rage  of  the  elements. 

In  the  afternoon  he  had  a  doctor — the  caravanserai, 
which  supplied  everything  in  quantities,  had  one  for 
each  group  of  so  many  rooms — just  in  order  to  be 
assured  that  he  was  grippe  enough  for  anything.  What 
his  visitor,  making  light  of  his  attack,  perversely  told 
him  was  that  he  was,  much  rather,  "blue"  enough, 
and  from  causes  doubtless  known  to  himself — which 
didn't  come  to  the  same  thing;  but  he  "gave  him 
something,"  prescribed  him  warmth  and  quiet  and 
broth  and  courage,  and  came  back  the  next  day  as  to 
readminister  this  last  dose.  He  then  pronounced  him 
better,  and  on  Saturday  pronounced  him  well — all  the 
more  that  the  storm  had  abated  and  the  snow  had 
been  dealt  with  as  New  York,  at  a  push,  knew  how  to 
deal  with  things.  Oh,  how  New  York  knew  how  to 
deal — to  deal,  that  is,  with  other  accumulations  lying 
passive  to  its  hand — was  exactly  what  Mark  now  ached 
with  his  impression  of;  so  that,  still  threshing  about  in 
this  consciousness,  he  had  on  the  Saturday  come  near 
to  breaking  out  as  to  what  was  the  matter  with  him. 
The  Doctor  brought  in  somehow  the  air  of  the  hotel— 
which,  cheerfully  and  conscientiously,  by  his  simple 
philosophy,  the  good  man  wished  to  diffuse;  breathing 
forth  all  the  echoes  of  other  woes  and  worries  and 
pointing  the  honest  moral  that,  especially  with  such  a 
thermometer,  there  were  enough  of  these  to  go  round. 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

Our  sufferer,  by  that  time,  would  have  liked  to  tell 
some  one;  extracting,  to  the  last  acid  strain  of  it,  the 
full  strength  of  his  sorrow,  taking  it  all  in  as  he  could 
only  do  by  himself  and  with  the  conditions  favourable 
at  least  to  this,  had  been  his  natural  first  need.  But 
now,  he  supposed,  he  must  be  better;  there  was  some 
thing  of  his  heart's  heaviness  he  wanted  so  to  give  out. 
He  had  rummaged  forth  on  the  Thursday  night 
half  a  dozen  old  photographs  stuck  into  a  leather  frame, 
a  small  show-case  that  formed  part  of  his  usual  equi 
page  of  travel — he  mostly  set  it  up  on  a  table  when  he 
stayed  anywhere  long  enough;  and  in  one  of  the  neat 
gilt-edged  squares  of  this  convenient  portable  array, 
as  familiar  as  his  shaving-glass  or  the  hair-brushes, 
of  backs  and  monograms  now  so  beautifully  toned  and 
wasted,  long  ago  given  him  by  his  mother,  Phil  Blood- 
good  handsomely  faced  him.  Not  contemporaneous, 
and  a  little  faded,  but  so  saying  what  it  said  only  the 
more  dreadfully,  the  image  seemed  to  sit  there,  at  an 
immemorial  window,  like  some  long  effective  and  only 
at  last  exposed  "decoy"  of  fate.  It  was  because  he 
was  so  beautifully  good-looking,  because  he  was  so 
charming  and  clever  and  frank — besides  being  one's 
third  cousin,  or  whatever  it  was,  one's  early  school 
fellow  and  one's  later  college  classmate — that  one  had 
abjectly  trusted  him.  To  live  thus  with  his  unre- 
moved,  undestroyed,  engaging,  treacherous  face,  had 
been,  as  our  traveller  desired,  to  live  with  all  of  the 
felt  pang;  had  been  to  consume  it  in  such  a  single  hot, 

144 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

sore  mouthful  as  would  so  far  as  possible  dispose  of 
it  and  leave  but  cold  dregs.  Thus,  if  the  Doctor,  cast 
ing  about  for  pleasantness,  had  happened  to  notice 
him  there,  salient  since  he  was,  and  possibly  by  the 
same  stroke  even  to  know  him,  as  New  York— and 
more  or  less  to  its  cost  now,  mightn't  one  say? — so 
abundantly  and  agreeable  had,  the  cup  would  have 
overflowed  and  Monteith,  for  all  he  could  be  sure  of 
the  contrary,  would  have  relieved  himself  positively 
in  tears. 

"Oh  he's  what's  the  matter  with  me — that,  looking 
after  some  of  my  poor  dividends,  as  he  for  the  ten 
years  of  my  absence  had  served  me  by  doing,  he  has 
simply  jockeyed  me  out  of  the  whole  little  collection, 
such  as  it  was,  and  taken  the  opportunity  of  my  return, 
inevitably  at  last  bewildered  and  uneasy,  to  'sail,'  ten 
days  ago,  for  parts  unknown  and  as  yet  unguessable. 
It  isn't  the  beastly  values  themselves,  however;  that's 
only  awkward  and  I  can  still  live,  though  I  don't  quite 
know  how  I  shall  turn  round;  it's  the  horror  of  his  hav 
ing  done  it,  and  done  it  to  me — without  a  mitigation  or, 
so  to  speak,  a  warning  or  an  excuse."  That,  at  a  hint 
or  a  jog,  is  what  he  would  have  brought  out — only  to 
feel  afterward,  no  doubt,  that  he  had  wasted  his  im 
pulse  and  profaned  even  a  little  his  sincerity.  The 
Doctor  didn't  in  the  event  so  much  as  glance  at  his 
cluster  of  portraits — which  fact  quite  put  before  our 
friend  the  essentially  more  vivid  range  of  imagery  that 
a  pair  of  eyes  transferred  from  room  to  room  and  from 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

one  queer  case  to  another,  in  such  a  place  as  that, 
would  mainly  be  adjusted  to.  It  wasn't  for  him  to 
relieve  himself  touchingly,  strikingly  or  whatever,  to 
such  a  man:  such  a  man  might  much  more  pertinently 
— save  for  professional  discretion — have  emptied  out 
there  his  own  bag  of  wonders;  prodigies  of  observation, 
flowers  of  oddity,  flowers  of  misery,  flowers  of  the 
monstrous,  gathered  in  current  hotel  practice.  Count 
less  possibilities,  making  doctors  perfunctory,  Mark 
felt,  swarmed  and  seethed  at  their  doors;  it  showed  for 
an  incalculable  world,  and  at  last,  on  Sunday,  he 
decided  to  leave  his  room. 


II 


EVERYTHING,  as  he  passed  through  the  place,  went 
on — all  the  offices  of  life,  the  whole  bustle  of  the  market, 
and  withal,  surprisingly,  scarce  less  that  of  the  nursery 
and  the  playground;  the  whole  sprawl  in  especial  of 
the  great  gregarious  fireside:  it  was  a  complete  social 
scene  in  itself,  on  which  types  might  figure  and  pas 
sions  rage  and  plots  thicken  and  dramas  develop,  with 
out  reference  to  any  other  sphere,  or  perhaps  even  to 
anything  at  all  outside.  The  signs  of  this  met  him  at 
every  turn  as  he  threaded  the  labyrinth,  passing  from 
one  extraordinary  masquerade  of  expensive  objects, 
one  portentous  " period"  of  decoration,  one  violent 
phase  of  publicity,  to  another:  the  heavy  heat,  the 
luxuriance,  the  extravagance,  the  quantity,  the  colour, 

146 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

gave  the  impression  of  some  wondrous  tropical  forest, 
where  vociferous,  bright-eyed,  and  feathered  creatures, 
of  every  variety  of  size  and  hue,  were  half  smothered 
between  undergrowths  of  velvet  and  tapestry  and  ram 
ifications  of  marble  and  bronze.  The  fauna  and  the 
flora  startled  him  alike,  and  among  them  his  bruised 
spirit  drew  in  and  folded  its  wings.  But  he  roamed 
and  rested,  exploring  and  in  a  manner  enjoying  the 
vast  rankness — in  the  depth  of  which  he  suddenly 
encountered  Mrs.  Folliott,  whom  he  had  last  seen,  six 
months  before,  in  London,  and  who  had  spoken  to 
him  then,  precisely,  of  Phil  Bloodgood,  for  several 
years  previous  her  confidential  American  agent  and 
factotum  too,  as  she  might  say,  but  at  that  time  so 
little  in  her  good  books,  for  the  extraordinary  things 
he  seemed  to  be  doing,  that  she  was  just  hurrying 
home,  she  had  made  no  scruple  of  mentioning,  to  take 
everything  out  of  his  hands. 

Mark  remembered  how  uneasy  she  had  made  him 
— how  that  very  talk  with  her  had  wound  him  up  to 
fear,  as  so  acute  and  intent  a  little  person  she  affected 
him;  though  he  had  affirmed  with  all  emphasis  and 
flourish  his  own  confidence  and  defended,  to  iteration, 
his  old  friend.  This  passage  had  remained  with  him 
for  a  certain  pleasant  heat  of  intimacy,  his  partner,  of 
the  charming  appearance,  being  what  she  was;  he 
liked  to  think  how  they  had  fraternised  over  their  dif 
ference  and  called  each  other  idiots,  or  almost,  without 
offence.  It  was  always  a  link  to  have  scuffled,  failing 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

a  real  scratch,  with  such  a  character;  and  he  had  at 
present  the  flutter  of  feeling  that  something  of  this 
would  abide.  He  hadn't  been  hurrying  home,  at  the 
London  time,  in  any  case;  he  was  doing  nothing  then, 
and  had  continued  to  do  it;  he  would  want,  before 
showing  suspicion — that  had  been  his  attitude — to  have 
more,  after  all,  to  go  upon.  Mrs.  Folliott  also,  and 
with  a  great  actual  profession  of  it,  remembered  and 
rejoiced;  and,  also  staying  in  the  house  as  she  was,  sat 
with  him,  under  a  spreading  palm,  in  a  wondrous 
rococo  salon,  surrounded  by  the  pinkest,  that  is  the 
fleshiest,  imitation  Boucher  panels,  and  wanted  to 
know  if  he  now  stood  up  for  his  swindler.  She  would 
herself  have  tumbled  on  a  cloud,  very  passably,  in  a 
fleshy  Boucher  manner,  hadn't  she  been  over-dressed 
for  such  an  exercise;  but  she  was  quite  realistically 
aware  of  what  had  so  naturally  happened — she  was 
prompt  about  Bloodgood's  "  flight." 

She  had  acted  with  energy,  on  getting  back — she 
had  saved  what  she  could;  which  hadn't,  however, 
prevented  her  losing  all  disgustedly  some  ten  thousand 
dollars.  She  was  lovely,  lively,  friendly,  interested, 
she  connected  Monteith  perfectly  with  their  discussion 
that  day  during  the  water-party  on  the  Thames;  but, 
sitting  here  with  him  half  an  hour,  she  talked  only  of 
her  peculiar,  her  cruel  sacrifice — since  she  should  never 
get  a  penny  back.  He  had  felt  himself,  on  their  meet 
ing,  quite  yearningly  reach  out  to  her — so  decidedly, 
by  the  morning's  end,  and  that  of  his  scattered  som- 

148 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

bre  stations,  had  he  been  sated  with  meaningless  con 
tacts,  with  the  sense  of  people  all  about  him  intensely, 
though  harmlessly,  animated,  yet  at  the  same  time 
raspingly  indifferent.  They  would  have,  he  and  she 
at  least,  their  common  pang — through  which  fact, 
somehow,  he  should  feel  less  stranded.  It  wasn't  that 
he  wanted  to  be  pitied — he  fairly  didn't  pity  himself; 
he  winced,  rather,  and  even  to  vicarious  anguish,  as  it 
rose  again,  for  poor  shamed  Bloodgood's  doom-ridden 
figure.  But  he  wanted,  as  with  a  desperate  charity,  to 
give  some  easier  turn  to  the  mere  ugliness  of  the  main 
facts;  to  work  off  his  obsession  from  them  by  mixing 
with  it  some  other  blame,  some  other  pity,  it  scarce 
mattered  what — if  it  might  be  some  other  experience; 
as  an  effect  of  which  larger  ventilation  it  would  have, 
after  a  fashion  and  for  a  man  of  free  sensibility,  a  di 
luted  and  less  poisonous  taste. 

By  the  end  of  five  minutes  of  Mrs.  Folliott,  however, 
he  felt  his  dry  lips  seal  themselves  to  a  makeshift  sim 
per.  She  could  take  nothing — no  better,  no  broader 
perception  of  anything  than  fitted  her  own  small  faculty; 
so  that  though  she  must  have  recalled  or  imagined  that 
he  had  still,  up  to  lately,  had  interests  at  stake,  the 
rapid  result  of  her  egotistical  little  chatter  was  to  make 
him  wish  he  might  rather  have  conversed  with  the 
French  waiter  dangling  in  the  long  vista  that  showed 
the  oriental  cafe  as  a  climax,  or  with  the  policeman, 
outside,  the  top  of  whose  helmet  peeped  above  the 
ledge  of  a  window.  She  bewailed  her  wretched  money 

149 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

to  excess — she  who,  he  was  sure,  had  quantities  more; 
she  pawed  and  tossed  her  bare  bone,  with  her  little 
extraordinarily  gemmed  and  manicured  hands,  till  it 
acted  on  his  nerves;  she  rang  all  the  changes  on  the 
story,  the  dire  fatality,  of  her  having  wavered  and 
muddled,  thought  of  this  and  but  done  that,  of  her 
stupid  failure  to  have  pounced,  when  she  had  first 
meant  to,  in  season.  She  abused  the  author  of  their 
wrongs — recognising  thus  too  Monteith's  right  to 
loathe  him — for  the  desperado  he  assuredly  had  proved, 
but  with  a  vulgarity  of  analysis  and  an  incapacity  for 
the  higher  criticism,  as  her  listener  felt  it  to  be,  which 
made  him  determine  resentfully,  almost  grimly,  that 
she  shouldn't  have  the  benefit  of  a  grain  of  his  vision 
or  his  version  of  what  had  befallen  them,  and  of  how, 
in  particular,  it  had  come;  and  should  never  dream 
thereby  (though  much  would  she  suffer  from  that!)  of 
how  interesting  he  might  have  been.  She  had,  in  a 
finer  sense,  no  manners,  and  to  be  concerned  with  her 
in  any  retrospect  was — since  their  discourse  was  of 
losses — to  feel  the  dignity  of  history  incur  the  very 
gravest.  It  was  true  that  such  fantasies,  or  that  any 
shade  of  inward  irony,  would  be  Greek  to  Mrs.  Folliott. 
It  was  also  true,  however,  and  not  much  more 
strange,  when  she  had  presently  the  comparatively 
happy  thought  of  " Lunch  with  us,  you  poor  dear!" 
and  mentioned  three  or  four  of  her  "crowd"— a  new 
crowd,  rather,  for  her,  all  great  Sunday  lunchers  there 
and  immense  fun,  who  would  in  a  moment  be  turning 

150 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

up — that  this  seemed  to  him  as  easy  as  anything  else; 
so  that  after  a  little,  deeper  in  the  jungle  and  while, 
under  the  temperature  as  of  high  noon,  with  the  crowd 
complete  and  "ordering,"  he  wiped  the  perspiration 
from  his  brow,  he  felt  he  was  letting  himself  go.  He 
did  that  certainly  to  the  extent  of  leaving  far  behind 
any  question  of  Mrs.  Folliott's  manners.  They  didn't 
matter  there — nobody's  did;  and  if  she  ceased  to  lament 
her  ten  thousand  it  was  only  because,  among  higher 
voices,  she  couldn't  make  herself  heard.  Poor  Blood- 
good  didn't  have  a  show,  as  they  might  have  said, 
didn't  get  through  at  any  point;  the  crowd  was  so  new 
that — there  either  having  been  no  hue  and  cry  for  him, 
or  having  been  too  many  others,  for  other  absconders, 
in  the  intervals — they  had  never  so  much  as  heard  of 
him  and  would  have  no  more  of  Mrs.  Folliott's  true 
inwardness,  on  that  subject  at  least,  than  she  had  lately 
cared  to  have  of  Monteith's. 

There  was  nothing  like  a  crowd,  this  unfortunate 
knew,  for  making  one  feel  lonely,  and  he  felt  so  increas 
ingly  during  the  meal;  but  he  got  thus  at  least  in  a 
measure  away  from  the  terrible  little  lady;  after  which, 
and  before  the  end  of  the  hour,  he  wanted  still  more  to 
get  away  from  every  one  else.  He  was  in  fact  about 
to  perform  this  manoeuvre  when  he  was  checked  by 
the  jolly  young  woman  he  had  been  having  on  his  left 
and  who  had  more  to  say  about  the  Hotels,  up  and 
down  the  town,  than  he  had  ever  known  a  young 
woman  to  have  to  say  on  any  subject  at  all;  she  ex- 


THE   FINER  GRAIN 

pressed  herself  in  hotel  terms  exclusively,  the  names 
of  those  establishments  playing  through  her  speech 
as  the  leit-motif  might  have  recurrently  flashed  and 
romped  through  a  piece  of  profane  modern  music. 
She  wanted  to  present  him  to  the  pretty  girl  she  had 
brought  with  her,  and  who  had  apparently  signified 
to  her  that  she  must  do  so. 

"I  think  you  know  my  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Newton 
Winch,"  the  pretty  girl  had  immediately  said;  she 
moved  her  head  and  shoulders  together,  as  by  a  com 
mon  spring,  the  effect  of  a  stiff  neck  or  of  something 
loosened  in  her  back  hair;  but  becoming,  queerly 
enough,  all  the  prettier  for  doing  so.  He  had  seen  in 
the  papers,  her  brother-in-law,  Mr.  Monteith's  arrival 
—Mr.  Mark  P.  Monteith,  wasn't  it? — and  where  he 
was,  and  she  had  been  with  him,  three  days  before,  at 
the  time;  whereupon  he  had  said  "Hullo,  what  can 
have  brought  old  Mark  back?"  He  seemed  to  have 
believed — Newton  had  seemed — that  that  shirker,  as 
he  called  him,  never  would  come;  and  she  guessed 
that  if  she  had  known  she  was  going  to  meet  such  a 
former  friend  ("Which  he  claims  you  are,  sir,"  said 
the  pretty  girl)  he  would  have  asked  her  to  find  out 
what  the  trouble  could  be.  But  the  real  satisfaction 
would  just  be,  she  went  on,  if  his  former  friend  would 
himself  go  and  see  him  and  tell  him;  he  had  appeared 
of  late  so  down. 

"Oh,  I  remember  him" — Mark  didn't  repudiate  the 
friendship,  placing  him  easily;  only  then  he  wasn't 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

married  and  the  pretty  girl's  sister  must  have  come  in 
later:  which  showed,  his  not  knowing  such  things,  how 
they  had  lost  touch.  The  pretty  girl  was  sorry  to  have 
to  say  in  return  to  this  that  her  sister  wasn't  living — 
had  died  two  years  after  marrying;  so  that  Newton 
was  up  there  in  Fiftieth  Street  alone;  where  (in  expla 
nation  of  his  being  "down")  he  had  been  shut  up  for 
days  with  bad  grippe;  though  now  on  the  mend,  or 
she  wouldn't  have  gone  to  him,  not  she,  who  had  had 
it  nineteen  times  and  didn't  want  to  have  it  again. 
But  the  horrid  poison  just  seemed  to  have  entered  into 
poor  Newton's  soul. 

"That's  the  way  it  can  take  you,  don't  you  know?" 
And  then  as,  with  her  single  twist,  she  just  charmingly 
hunched  her  eyes  at  our  friend,  "Don't  you  want  to 
go  to  see  him?" 

Mark  bethought  himself:  "Well,  I'm  going  to  see  a 
lady " 

She  took  the  words  from  his  mouth.  "Of  course 
you're  going  to  see  a  lady — every  man  in  New  York 
is.  But  Newton  isn't  a  lady,  unfortunately  for  him, 
to-day;  and  Sunday  afternoon  in  this  place,  in  this 
weather,  alone !" 

"Yes,  isn't  it  awful?" — he  was  quite  drawn  to  her. 

"Oh,  you've  got  your  lady!" 

"Yes,  I've  got  my  lady,  thank  goodness!"  The 
fervour  of  which  was  his  sincere  tribute  to  the  note  he 
had  had  on  Friday  morning  from  Mrs.  Ash,  the  only 
thing  that  had  a  little  tempered  his  gloom. 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"Well  then,  feel  for  others.  Fit  him  in.  Tell  him 
why!" 

"Why  I've  come  back?  I'm  glad  I  have — since  it 
was  to  see  you  /"  Monteith  made  brave  enough  answer, 
promising  to  do  what  he  could.  He  liked  the  pretty 
girl,  with  her  straight  attack  and  her  free  awkwardness 
— also  with  her  difference  from  the  others  through 
something  of  a  sense  and  a  distinction  given  her  by  so 
clearly  having  Newton  on  her  mind.  Yet  it  was  odd 
to  him,  and  it  showed  the  lapse  of  the  years,  that 
Winch — as  he  had  known  him  of  old — could  be  to  that 
degree  on  any  one's  mind. 

Ill 

OUTSIDE  in  the  intensity  of  the  cold — it  was  a  jump 
from  the  Tropics  to  the  Pole — he  felt  afresh  the  force 
of  what  he  had  just  been  saying;  that  if  it  weren't  for 
the  fact  of  Mrs.  Ash's  good  letter  of  welcome,  de 
spatched,  characteristically,  as  soon  as  she  had,  like 
the  faithful  sufferer  in  Fiftieth  Street,  observed  his 
name,  in  a  newspaper,  on  one  of  the  hotel-lists,  he 
should  verily,  for  want  of  a  connection  and  an  abut 
ment,  have  scarce  dared  to  face  the  void  and  the  chill 
together,  but  have  sneaked  back  into  the  jungle  and 
there  tried  to  lose  himself.  He  made,  as  it  was,  the 
opposite  effort,  resolute  to  walk,  though  hovering  now 
and  then  at  vague  crossways,  radiations  of  roads  to 
nothing,  or  taking  cold  counsel  of  the  long  but  still 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

sketchy  vista,  as  it  struck  him,  of  the  northward 
Avenue,  bright  and  bleak,  fresh  and  harsh,  rich  and 
evident  somehow,  a  perspective  like  a  page  of  florid 
modern  platitudes.  He  didn't  quite  know  what  he  had 
expected  for  his  return — not  certainly  serenades  and 
deputations;  but  without  Mrs.  Ash  his  mail  would  have 
quite  lacked  geniality,  and  it  was  as  if  Phil  Blood- 
good  had  gone  off  not  only  with  so  large  a  slice  of  his 
small  peculium,  but  with  all  the  broken  bits  of  the 
past,  the  loose  ends  of  old  relationships,  that  he  had 
supposed  he  might  pick  up  again.  Well,  perhaps  he 
should  still  pick  up  a  few — by  the  sweat  of  his  brow; 
no  motion  of  their  own  at  least,  he  by  this  time  judged, 
would  send  them  fluttering  into  his  hand. 

Which  reflections  but  quickened  his  forecast  of  this 
charm  of  the  old  Paris  inveteracy  renewed — the  so- 
prized  custom  of  nine  years  before,  when  he  still 
believed  in  results  from  his  fond  frequentation  of  the 
Beaux  Arts;  that  of  walking  over  the  river  to  the  Rue 
de  Marignan,  precisely,  every  Sunday  without  excep 
tion,  and  sitting  at  her  fireside,  and  often  all  offen 
sively,  no  doubt,  outstaying  every  one.  How  he  had 
used  to  want  those  hours  then,  and  how  again,  after  a 
little,  at  present,  the  Rue  de  Marignan  might  have 
been  before  him!  He  had  gone  to  her  there  at  that 
time  with  his  troubles,  such  as  they  were,  and  they 
had  always  worked  for  her  amusement — which  had 
been  her  happy,  her  clever  way  of  taking  them:  she 
couldn't  have  done  anything  better  for  them  in  that 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

phase,  poor  innocent  things  compared  with  what  they 
might  have  been,  than  be  amused  by  them.  Perhaps 
that  was  what  she  would  still  be — with  those  of  his 
present  hour;  now  too  they  might  inspire  her  with  the 
touch  she  best  applied  and  was  most  instinctive  mis 
tress  of:  this  didn't  at  all  events  strike  him  as  what  he 
should  most  resent.  It  wasn't  as  if  Mrs.  Folliott,  to 
make  up  for  boring  him  with  her  own  plaint,  for 
example,  had  had  so  much  as  a  gleam  of  conscious 
diversion  over  his. 

"I'm  so  delighted  to  see  you,  I've  such  immensities 
to  tell  you!" — it  began  with  the  highest  animation 
twenty  minutes  later,  the  very  moment  he  stood  there, 
the  sense  of  the  Rue  de  Marignan  in  the  charming 
room  and  in  the  things  about  all  reconstituted,  re 
grouped,  wonderfully  preserved,  down  to  the  very 
sitting-places  in  the  same  relations,  and  down  to  the 
faint  sweet  mustiness  of  generations  of  cigarettes;  but 
everything  else  different,  and  even  vaguely  alien,  and 
by  a  measure  still  other  than  that  of  their  own  stretched 
interval  and  of  the  dear  delightful  woman's  just  a  lit 
tle  pathetic  alteration  of  face.  He  had  allowed  for  the 
nine  years,  and  so,  it  was  to  be  hoped,  had  she;  but 
the  last  thing,  otherwise,  that  would  have  been  touched, 
he  immediately  felt,  was  the  quality,  the  intensity,  of 
her  care  to  see  him.  She  cared,  oh  so  visibly  and 
touchingly  and  almost  radiantly — save  for  her  being, 
yes,  distinctly,  a  little  more  battered  than  from  even 
a  good  nine  years'  worth;  nothing  could  in  fact  have 

156 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

perched  with  so  crowning  an  impatience  on  the  heap 
of  what  she  had  to  "tell"  as  that  special  shade  of 
revived  consciousness  of  having  him  in  particular  to 
tell  it  to.  It  wasn't  perhaps  much  to  matter  how 
soon  she  brought  out  and  caused  to  ring,  as  it  were,  on 
the  little  recognised  marqueterie  table  between  them 
(such  an  anciently  envied  treasure),  the  heaviest  gold- 
piece  of  current  history  she  was  to  pay  him  with  for 
having  just  so  felicitously  come  back:  he  knew  already, 
without  the  telling,  that  intimate  domestic  tension 
must  lately,  within  those  walls,  have  reached  a  climax 
and  that  he  could  serve  supremely — oh  how  he  was 
going  to  serve! — as  the  most  sympathetic  of  all  pairs 
of  ears. 

The  whole  thing  was  upon  him,  in  any  case,  with 
the  minimum  of  delay:  Bob  had  had  it  from  her, 
definitely,  the  first  of  the  week,  and  it  was  absolutely 
final  now,  that  they  must  set  up  avowedly  separate 
lives — without  horrible  "proceedings"  of  any  sort, 
but  with  her  own  situation,  her  independence,  secured 
to  her  once  for  all.  She  had  been  coming  to  it,  taking 
her  time,  and  she  had  gone  through — well,  so  old  a 
friend  would  guess  enough  what;  but  she  was  at  the 
point,  oh  blessedly  now,  where  she  meant  to  stay, 
he'd  see  if  she  didn't;  with  which,  in  this  wonderful 
way,  he  himself  had  arrived  for  the  cream  of  it  and 
she  was  just  selfishly  glad.  Bob  had  gone  to  Wash 
ington — ostensibly  on  business,  but  really  to  recover 
breath;  she  had,  speaking  vulgarly,  knocked  the  wind 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

out  of  him  and  was  allowing  him  time  to  turn  round. 
Mrs.  Folliott  moreover,  she  was  sure,  would  have 
gone — was  certainly  believed  to  have  been  seen  there 
five  days  ago;  and  of  course  his  first  necessity,  for 
public  use,  would  be  to  patch  up  something  with  Mrs. 
Folliott.  Mark  knew  about  Mrs.  Folliott? — who  was 
only,  for  that  matter,  one  of  a  regular  "bevy."  Not 
that  it  signified,  however,  if  he  didn't:  she  would  tell 
him  about  her  later. 

He  took  occasion  from  the  first  fraction  of  a  break 
not  quite  to  know  what  he  knew  about  Mrs.  Folliott 
—though  perhaps  he  could  imagine  a  little;  and  it 
was  probably  at  this  minute  that,  having  definitely 
settled  to  a  position,  and  precisely  in  his  very  own 
tapestry  bergere,  the  one  with  the  delicious  little  spec 
tral  "subjects"  on  the  back  and  seat,  he  partly  ex 
haled,  and  yet  managed  partly  to  keep  to  himself, 
the  deep  resigned  sigh  of  a  general  comprehension. 
He  knew  what  he  was  "in"  for,  he  heard  her  go  on — 
she  said  it  again  and  again,  seemed  constantly  to  be 
saying  it  while  she  smiled  at  him  with  her  peculiar 
fine  charm,  her  positive  gaiety  of  sensibility,  scarce 
dimmed:  "I'm  just  selfishly  glad,  just  selfishly  glad!" 
Well,  she  was  going  to  have  reason  to  be;  she  was 
going  to  put  the  whole  case  to  him,  all  her  troubles 
and  plans,  and  each  act  of  the  tragi-comedy  of  her 
recent  existence,  as  to  the  dearest  and  safest  sympa 
thiser  in  all  the  world.  There  would  be  no  chance  for 
his  case,  though  it  was  so  much  for  his  case  he  had 

158 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

come;  yet  there  took  place  within  him  but  a  mild, 
dumb  convulsion,  the  momentary  strain  of  his  sub 
stituting,  by  the  turn  of  a  hand,  one  prospect  of  inter 
est  for  another. 

Squaring  himself  in  his  old  bergere,  and  with  his 
lips,  during  the  effort,  compressed  to  the  same  passive 
grimace  that  had  an  hour  or  two  before  operated  for 
the  encouragement  of  Mrs.  Folliott — just  as  it  was  to 
clear  the  stage  completely  for  the  present  more  pro 
longed  performance — he  shut  straight  down,  as  he 
even  in  the  act  called  it  to  himself,  on  any  personal 
claim  for  social  consideration  and  rendered  a  perfect 
little  agony  of  justice  to  the  grounds  of  his  friend's 
vividness.  For  it  was  all  the  justice  that  could  be 
expected  of  him  that,  though,  secretly,  he  wasn't  going 
to  be  interested  in  her  being  interesting,  she  was  yet 
going  to  be  so,  all  the  same,  by  the  very  force  of  her 
lovely  material  (Bob  Ash  was  such  a  pure  pearl  of  a 
donkey!)  and  he  was  going  to  keep  on  knowing  she 
was — yes,  to  the  very  end.  When  after  the  lapse  of 
an  hour  he  rose  to  go,  the  rich  fact  that  she  had  been 
was  there  between  them,  and  with  an  effect  of  the 
frankly,  fearlessly,  harmlessly  intimate  fireside  passage 
for  it  that  went  beyond  even  the  best  memories  of 
the  pleasant  past.  He  hadn't  "amused"  her,  no,  in 
quite  the  same  way  as  in  the  Rue  de  Marignan  time 
— it  had  then  been  he  who  for  the  most  part  took 
frequent  turns,  emphatic,  explosive,  elocutionary,  over 
that  wonderful  waxed  parquet  while  she  laughed  as 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

for  the  young  perversity  of  him  from  the  depths  of 
the  second,  the  matching  bergere.  To-day  she  herself 
held  and  swept  the  floor,  putting  him  merely  to  the 
trouble  of  his  perpetual  "Brava!"  But  that  was  all 
through  the  change  of  basis — the  amusement,  another 
name  only  for  the  thrilled  absorption,  having  been 
inevitably  for  him;  as  how  could  it  have  failed  to  be 
with  such  a  regular  "treat"  to  his  curiosity?  With 
the  tea-hour  now  other  callers  were  turning  up,  and 
he  got  away  on  the  plea  of  his  wanting  so  to  think  it 
all  over.  He  hoped  again  he  hadn't  too  queer  a  grin 
with  his  assurance  to  her,  as  if  she  would  quite  know 
what  he  meant,  that  he  had  been  thrilled  to  the  core. 
But  she  returned,  quite  radiantly,  that  he  had  carried 
her  completely  away;  and  her  sincerity  was  proved  by 
the  final  frankness  of  their  temporary  parting.  "My 
pleasure  of  you  is  selfish,  horribly,  I  admit;  so  that  if 
that  doesn't  suit  you — !"  Her  faded  beauty  flushed 
again  as  she  said  it. 


IV 


IN  the  street  again,  as  he  resumed  his  walk,  he  saw 
how  perfectly  it  would  have  to  suit  him  and  how  he 
probably  for  a  long  time  wouldn't  be  suited  otherwise. 
Between  them  and  that  time,  however,  what  mightn't, 
for  him,  poor  devil,  on  his  new  basis,  have  happened? 
She  wasn't  at  any  rate  within  any  calculable  period 
going  to  care  so  much  for  anything  as  for  the  so 

160 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

quaintly  droll  terms  in  which  her  rearrangement  with 
her  husband — thanks  to  that  gentleman's  inimitable 
fatuity — would  have  to  be  made:  This  was  what  it 
was  to  own,  exactly,  her  special  grace — the  brightest 
gaiety  in  the  finest  sensibility;  such  a  display  of  which 
combination,  Mark  felt  as  he  went  (if  he  could  but 
have  done  it  still  more  justice)  she  must  have  regaled 
him  with!  That  exquisite  last  flush  of  her  fadedness 
could  only  remain  with  him;  yet  while  he  presently 
stopped  at  a  street-corner  in  a  district  redeemed  from 
desolation  but  by  the  passage  just  then  of  a  choked 
trolley-car  that  howled,  as  he  paused  for  it,  beneath 
the  weight  of  its  human  accretions,  he  seemed  to  know 
the  inward  " sinking"  that  had  been  determined  in  a 
hungry  man  by  some  extravagant  sight  of  the  prepa 
ration  of  somebody  else's  dinner.  Florence  Ash  was 
dining,  so  to  speak,  off  the  feast  of  appreciation,  ap 
preciation  of  what  she  had  to  "tell"  him,  that  he  had 
left  her  seated  at;  and  she  was  welcome,  assuredly — 
welcome,  welcome,  welcome,  he  musingly,  he  wistfully, 
and  yet  at  the  same  time  a  trifle  mechanically,  repeat 
ed,  stayed  as  he  was  a  moment  longer  by  the  suffer 
ing  shriek  of  another  public  vehicle  and  a  sudden 
odd  automatic  return  of  his  mind  to  the  pretty  girl, 
the  flower  of  Mrs.  Folliott's  crowd,  who  had  spoken 
to  him  of  Newton  Winch.  It  was  extraordinarily  as 
if,  on  the  instant,  she  reminded  him,  from  across  the 
town,  that  she  had  offered  him  dinner:  it  was  really 
quite  strangely,  while  he  stood  there,  as  if  she  had 

161 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

told  him  where  he  could  go  and  get  it.  With  which, 
none  the  less,  it  was  apparently  where  he  wouldn't 
find  her — and  what  was  there,  after  all,  of  nutritive 
in  the  image  of  Newton  Winch?  He  made  up  his 
mind  in  a  moment  that  it  owed  that  property,  which 
the  pretty  girl  had  somehow  made  imputable,  to  the 
fact  of  its  simply  being  just  then  the  one  image  of  any 
thing  known  to  him  that  the  terrible  place  had  to  offer. 
Nothing,  he  a  minute  later  reflected,  could  have  been 
so  "rum"  as  that,  sick  and  sore,  of  a  bleak  New  York 
eventide,  he  should  have  had  nowhere  to  turn  if  not 
to  the  said  Fiftieth  Street. 

That  was  the  direction  he  accordingly  took,  for 
when  he  found  the  number  given  him  by  the  same 
remarkable  agent  of  fate  also  present  to  his  memory 
he  recognised  the  direct  intervention  of  Providence 
and  how  it  absolutely  required  a  miracle  to  explain 
his  so  precipitately  embracing  this  loosest  of  connec 
tions.  The  miracle  indeed  soon  grew  clearer:  Provi 
dence  had,  on  some  obscure  system,  chosen  this  very 
ridiculous  hour  to  save  him  from  cultivation  of  the  sin 
of  selfishness,  the  obsession  of  egotism,  and  was  break 
ing  him  to  its  will  by  constantly  directing  his  attention 
to  the  claims  of  others.  Who  could  say  what  at  that 
critical  moment  mightn't  have  become  of  Mrs.  Fol- 
liott  (otherwise  too  then  so  sadly  embroiled!)  if  she 
hadn't  been  enabled  to  air  to  him  her  grievance  and 
her  rage? — just  as  who  could  deny  that  it  must  have 
done  Florence  Ash  a  world  of  good  to  have  put  her 

162 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

thoughts  about  Bob  in  order  by  the  aid  of  a  person  to 
whom  the  vision  of  Bob  in  the  light  of  those  thoughts 
(or  in  other  words  to  whom  her  vision  of  Bob  and 
nothing  else)  would  mean  so  delightfully  much?  It 
was  on  the  same  general  lines  that  poor  Newton 
Winch,  bereft,  alone,  ill,  perhaps  dying,  and  with 
the  drawback  of  a  not  very  sympathetic  personality— 
as  Mark  remembered  it  at  least — to  contend  against 
in  almost  any  conceivable  appeal  to  human  further 
ance,  it  was  on  these  lines,  very  much,  that  the  luck 
less  case  in  Fiftieth  Street  was  offered  him  as  a  source 
of  salutary  discipline.  The  moment  for  such  a  lesson 
might  strike  him  as  strange,  in  view  of  the  quite 
special  and  independent  opportunity  for  exercise  that 
his  spirit  had  during  the  last  three  days  enjoyed  there 
in  his  hotel  bedroom;  but  evidently  his  languor  of 
charity  needed  some  admonition  finer  than  any  it 
might  trust  to  chance  for,  and  by  the  time  he  at  last, 
Winch's  residence  recognised,  was  duly  elevated  to 
his  level  and  had  pressed  the  electric  button  at  his 
door,  he  felt  himself  acting  indeed  as  under  stimulus 
of  a  sharp  poke  in  the  side. 


WITHIN  the  apartment  to  which  he  had  been  ad 
mitted,  moreover,  the  fine  intelligence  we  have  imputed 
to  him  was  in  the  course  of  three  minutes  confirmed; 
since  it  took  him  no  longer  than  that  to  say  to  himself, 

163 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

facing  his  old  acquaintance,  that  he  had  never  seen 
any  one  so  improved.  The  place,  which  had  the 
semblance  of  a  high  studio  light  as  well  as  a  general 
air  of  other  profusions  and  amplitudes,  might  have 
put  him  off  a  little  by  its  several  rather  glaringly  false 
accents,  those  of  contemporary  domestic  "art"  striking 
a  little  wild.  The  scene  was  smaller,  but  the  rich  con 
fused  complexion  of  the  Pocahontas,  showing  through 
Du  Barry  paint  and  patches,  might  have  set  the  exam 
ple — which  had  been  followed  with  the  costliest  can 
dour — so  that,  clearly,  Winch  was  in  these  days  rich, 
as  most  people  in  New  York  seemed  rich;  as,  in  spite 
of  Bob's  depredations,  Florence  Ash  was,  as  even  Mrs. 
Folliott  was  in  spite  of  Phil  Bloodgood's,  as  even  Phil 
Bloodgood  himself  must  have  been  for  reasons  too 
obvious;  as  in  fine  every  one  had  a  secret  for  being, 
or  for  feeling,  or  for  looking,  every  one  at  least  but 
Mark  Monteith. 

These  facts  were  as  nothing,  however,  in  presence 
of  his  quick  and  strong  impression  that  his  pale,  ner 
vous,  smiling,  clean-shaven  host  had  undergone  since 
their  last  meeting  some  extraordinary  process  of  refine 
ment.  He  had  been  ill,  unmistakably,  and  the  effects 
of  a  plunge  into  plain  clean  living,  where  any  fineness 
had  remained,  were  often  startling,  sometimes  almost 
charming.  But  independently  of  this,  and  for  a  much 
longer  time,  some  principle  of  intelligence,  some  art  of 
life,  would  discernibly  have  worked  in  him.  Remem 
bered  from  college  years  and  from  those  two  or  three 

164 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

luckless  and  faithless  ones  of  the  Law  School  as  con 
stitutionally  common,  as  consistently  and  thereby 
doubtless  even  rather  powerfully  coarse,  clever  only 
for  uncouth  and  questionable  things,  he  yet  presented 
himself  now  as  if  he  had  suddenly  and  mysteriously 
been  educated.  There  was  a  charm  in  his  wide, 
"  drawn,"  convalescent  smile,  in  the  way  his  fine  fin 
gers — had  he  anything  like  fine  fingers  of  old? — 
played,  and  just  fidgeted,  over  the  prompt  and  per 
haps  a  trifle  incoherent  offer  of  cigars,  cordials,  ash 
trays,  over  the  question  of  his  visitor's  hat,  stick, 
fur  coat,  general  best  accommodation  and  ease;  and 
how  the  deuce,  accordingly,  had  charm,  for  coming 
out  so  on  top,  Mark  wondered,  " squared"  the  other 
old  elements?  For  the  short  interval  so  to  have  dealt 
with  him  what  force  had  it  turned  on,  what  patented 
process,  of  the  portentous  New  York  order  in  which 
there  were  so  many,  had  it  skilfully  applied?  Were 
these  the  things  New  York  did  when  you  just  gave 
her  all  her  head,  and  that  he  himself  then  had  perhaps 
too  complacently  missed  ?  Strange  almost  to  the  point 
of  putting  him  positively  off  at  first — quite  as  an  exhi 
bition  of  the  uncanny — this  sense  of  Newton's  having 
all  the  while  neither  missed  nor  muffed  anything,  and 
having,  as  with  an  eye  to  the  coup  de  theatre  to  come, 
lowered  one's  expectations,  at  the  start,  to  that  abject 
pitch.  It  might  have  been  taken  verily  for  an  act  of  bad 
faith — really  for  such  a  rare  stroke  of  subtlety  as  could 
scarce  have  been  achieved  by  a  straight  or  natural  aim. 

165 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

So  much  as  this  at  least  came  and  went  in  Mon- 
teith's  agitated  mind;  the  oddest  intensity  of  apprehen 
sion,  admiration,  mystification,  which  the  high  north- 
light  of  the  March  afternoon  and  the  quite  splen 
didly  vulgar  appeal  of  fifty  overdone  decorative  effects 
somehow  fostered  and  sharpened.  Everything  had  al 
ready  gone,  however,  the  next  moment,  for  wasn't  the 
man  he  had  come  so  much  too  intelligently  himself  to 
patronise  absolutely  bowling  him  over  with  the  extraor 
dinary  speech:  "See  here,  you  know — you  must  be 
ill,  or  have  had  a  bad  shock,  or  some  beastly  upset: 
are  you  very  sure  you  ought  to  have  come  out?" 
Yes,  he  after  an  instant  believed  his  ears;  coarse  com 
mon  Newton  Winch,  whom  he  had  called  on  because 
he  could,  as  a  gentleman,  after  all  afford  to,  coarse 
common  Newton  Winch,  who  had  had  troubles  and 
been  epidemically  poisoned,  lamentably  sick,  who  bore 
in  his  face  and  in  the  very  tension,  quite  exactly  the 
"charm,"  of  his  manner,  the  traces  of  his  late  ordeal, 
and,  for  that  matter,  of  scarce  completed  gallant  emer 
gence — this  astonishing  ex-comrade  was  simply  writing 
himself  at  a  stroke  (into  our  friend's  excited  imagina 
tion  at  all  events)  the  most  distinguished  of  men.  Oh, 
he  was  going  to  be  interesting,  if  Florence  Ash  had 
been  going  to  be;  but  Mark  felt  how,  under  the  law  of 
a  lively  present  difference,  that  would  be  as  an  effect 
of  one's  having  one's  self  thoroughly  rallied.  He  knew 
within  the  minute  that  the  tears  stood  in  his  eyes;  he 
stared  through  them  at  his  friend  with  a  sharp  "Why, 

1 66 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

how  do  you  know?  How  can  you?"  To  which  he 
added  before  Winch  could  speak:  "I  met  your  charm 
ing  sister-in-law  a  couple  of  hours  since — at  luncheon, 
at  the  Pocahontas;  and  heard  from  her  that  you  were 
badly  laid  up  and  had  spoken  of  me.  So  I  came  to 
minister  to  you." 

The  object  of  this  design  hovered  there  again,  con 
siderably  restless,  shifting  from  foot  to  foot,  changing 
his  place,  beginning  and  giving  up  motions,  striking 
matches  for  a  fresh  cigarette,  offering  them  again, 
redundantly,  to  his  guest  and  then  not  lighting  himself 
— but  all  the  while  with  the  smile  of  another  creature 
than  the  creature  known  to  Mark;  all  the  while  with 
the  history  of  something  that  had  happened  to  him 
ever  so  handsomely  shining  out.  Mark  was  conscious 
within  himself  from  this  time  on  of  two  quite  distinct 
processes  of  notation — that  of  his  practically  instant 
surrender  to  the  consequences  of  the  act  of  perception 
in  his  host  of  which  the  two  women  trained  suppos- 
ably  in  the  art  of  pleasing  had  been  altogether  inca 
pable;  and  that  of  some  other  condition  on  Newton's 
part  that  left  his  own  poor  power  of  divination  nothing 
less  than  shamed.  This  last  was  signally  the  case  on 
the  former's  saying,  ever  so  responsively,  almost  radi 
antly,  in  answer  to  his  account  of  how  he  happened 
to  come:  "Oh  then  it's  very  interesting!"  That  was 
the  astonishing  note,  after  what  he  had  been  through: 
neither  Mrs.  Folliott  nor  Florence  Ash  had  so  much 
as  hinted  or  breathed  to  him  that  he  might  have  in- 

I67 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

curred  that  praise.  No  wonder  therefore  he  was  now 
taken — with  this  fresh  party's  instant  suspicion  and 
imputation  of  it;  though  it  was  indeed  for  some  min 
utes  next  as  if  each  tried  to  see  which  could  accuse  the 
other  of  the  greater  miracle  of  penetration.  Mark  was 
so  struck,  in  a  word,  with  the  extraordinarily  straight 
guess  Winch  had  had  there  in  reserve  for  him  that, 
other  quick  impressions  helping,  there  was  nothing  for 
him  but  to  bring  out,  himself:  "There  must  be,  my 
dear  man,  something  rather  wonderful  the  matter  with 
you!"  The  quite  more  intensely  and  more  irresistibly 
drawn  grin,  the  quite  unmistakably  deeper  conscious 
ness  in  the  dark,  wide  eye,  that  accompanied  the  not 
quite  immediate  answer  to  which  remark  he  was  after 
ward  to  remember. 

"How  do  you  know  that — or  why  do  you  think  it?" 
"  Because  there  must  be — for  you  to  see !    I  shouldn't 
have  expected  it." 

"Then  you  take  me  for  a  damned  fool?"  laughed 
wonderful  Newton  Winch. 

VI 

HE  could  say  nothing  that,  whether  as  to  the  sense 
of  it  or  as  to  the  way  of  it,  didn't  so  enrich  Mark's 
vision  of  him  that  our  friend,  after  a  little,  as  this  effect 
proceeded,  caught  himself  in  the  act  of  almost  too 
curiously  gaping.  Everything,  from  moment  to  mo 
ment,  fed  his  curiosity;  such  a  question,  for  instance, 
as  whether  the  quite  ordinary  peepers  of  the  Newton 

168 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

Winch  of  their  earlier  youth  could  have  looked,  under 
any  provocation,  either  dark  or  wide;  such  a  question, 
above  all,  as  how  this  incalculable  apparition  came 
by  the  whole  startling  power  of  play  of  its  extrava 
gantly  sensitive  labial  connections — exposed,  so  to  its 
advantage  (he  now  jumped  at  one  explanation)  by  the 
removal  of  what  had  probably  been  one  of  the  vulgar- 
est  of  moustaches.  With  this,  at  the  same  time,  the 
oddity  of  that  particular  consequence  was  vivid  to  him; 
the  glare  of  his  curiosity  fairly  lasting  while  he  remem 
bered  how  he  had  once  noted  the  very  opposite  turn 
of  the  experiment  for  Phil  Bloodgood.  He  would 
have  said  in  advance  that  poor  Winch  couldn't  have 
afforded  to  risk  showing  his  "real"  mouth;  just  as 
he  would  have  said  that  in  spite  of  the  fine  ornament 
that  so  considerably  muffled  it  Phil  could  only  have 
gained  by  showing  his.  But  to  have  seen  Phil  shorn — 
as  he  once  had  done — was  earnestly  to  pray  that  he 
might  promptly  again  bristle;  beneath  Phil's  moustache 
lurked  nothing  to  "make  up"  for  it  in  case  of  removal. 
While  he  thought  of  which  things  the  line  of  grimace, 
as  he  could  only  have  called  it,  the  mobile,  interesting, 
ironic  line  the  great  double  curve  of  which  connected, 
in  the  face  before  him,  the  strong  nostril  with  the 
lower  cheek,  became  the  very  key  to  his  first  idea  of 
Newton's  capture  of  refinement.  He  had  shaved  and 
was  happily  transfigured.  Phil  Bloodgood  had  shaved 
and  been  wellnigh  lost;  though  why  should  he  just 
now  too  precipitately  drag  the  reminiscence  in? 

169 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

That  question  too,  at  the  queer  touch  of  association, 
played  up  for  Mark  even  under  so  much  proof  that 
the  state  of  his  own  soul  was  being  with  the  lapse  of 
every  instant  registered.  Phil  Bloodgood  had  brought 
about  the  state  of  his  soul — there  was  accordingly  that 
amount  of  connection;  only  it  became  further  remark 
able  that  from  the  moment  his  companion  had  sounded 
him,  and  sounded  him,  he  knew,  down  to  the  last 
truth  of  things,  his  disposition,  his  necessity  to  talk, 
the  desire  that  had  in  the  morning  broken  the  spell 
of  his  confinement,  the  impulse  that  had  thrown  him 
so,  defeatedly  into  Mrs.  Folliott's  arms  and  into  Flor 
ence  Ash's,  these  forces  seemed  to  feel  their  impa 
tience  ebb  and  their  discretion  suddenly  grow.  His 
companion  was  talking  again,  but  just  then,  incongru 
ously,  made  his  need  to  communicate  lose  itself.  It 
was  as  if  his  personal  case  had  already  been  touched 
by  some  tender  hand — and  that,  after  all,  was  the 
modest  limit  of  its  greed.  "I  know  now  why  you 
came  back — did  Lottie  mention  how  I  had  wondered  ? 
But  sit  down,  sit  down — only  let  me,  nervous  beast  as 
I  am,  take  it  standing! — and  believe  me  when  I  tell 
you  that  I've  now  ceased  to  wonder.  My  dear  chap, 
I  have  it!  It  can't  but  have  been  for  poor  Phil  Blood- 
good.  He  sticks  out  of  you,  the  brute — as  how,  with 
what  he  has  done  to  you,  shouldn't  he?  There  was  a 
man  to  see  me  yesterday — Tim  Slater,  whom  I  don't 
think  you  know,  but  who's  'on'  everything  within 
about  two  minutes  of  its  happening  (I  never  saw  such 

170 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

a  fellow!)  and  who  confirmed  my  supposition,  all  my 
own,  however,  mind  you,  at  first,  that  you're  one  of 
the  sufferers.  So  how  the  devil  can  you  not  feel 
knocked  ?  Why  should  you  look  as  if  you  were  having 
the  time  of  your  life?  What  a  hog  to  have  played  it 
on  you,  on  you,  of  all  his  friends!"  So  Newton  Winch 
continued,  and  so  the  air  between  the  two  men  might 
have  been,  for  a  momentary  watcher — which  is  indeed 
what  I  can  but  invite  the  reader  to  become — that  of  a 
nervously  displayed,  but  all  considerate,  as  well  as 
most  acute,  curiosity  on  the  one  side,  and  that  on  the 
other,  after  a  little,  of  an  eventually  fascinated  accept 
ance  of  so  much  free  and  in  especial  of  so  much  right 
attention.  "Do  you  mind  my  asking  you?  Because 
if  you  do  I  won't  press;  but  as  a  man  whose  own 
responsibilities,  some  of  'em  at  least,  don't  differ  much, 
I  gather,  from  some  of  his,  one  would  like  to  know 
how  he  was  ever  allowed  to  get  to  the  point — !  But  I 
do  plough  you  up?" 

Mark  sat  back  in  his  chair,  moved  but  holding  him 
self,  his  elbows  squared  on  each  arm,  his  hands  a  bit 
convulsively  interlocked  across  him — very  much  in  fact 
as  he  had  appeared  an  hour  ago  in  the  old  tapestry 
bergere;  but  as  his  rigour  was  all  then  that  of  the  grind 
ing  effort  to  profess  and  to  give,  so  it  was  considerably 
now  for  the  fear  of  too  hysterically  gushing.  Some 
how  too — since  his  wound  was  to  that  extent  open — 
he  winced  at  hearing  the  author  of  it  branded.  He 
hadn't  so  much  minded  the  epithets  Mrs.  Folliott  had 

171 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

applied,  for  they  were  to  the  appropriator  of  her  secu 
rities.  As  the  appropriator  of  his  own  he  didn't  so 
much  want  to  brand  him  as — just  more  " amusingly" 
even,  if  one  would! — to  make  out,  perhaps,  with  intel 
ligent  help,  how  such  a  man,  in  such  a  relation,  could 
come  to  tread  such  a  path:  which  was  exactly  the 
interesting  light  that  Winch's  curiosity  and  sympathy 
were  there  to  assist  him  to.  He  pleaded  at  any  rate 
immediately  his  advertising  no  grievance.  "I  feel 
sore,  I  admit,  and  it's  a  horrid  sort  of  thing  to  have 
had  happen;  but  when  you  call  him  a  brute  and  a 
hog  I  rather  squirm,  for  brutes  and  hogs  never  live,  I 
guess,  in  the  sort  of  hell  in  which  he  now  must  be." 

Newton  Winch,  before  the  fireplace,  his  hands  deep 
in  his  pockets,  where  his  guest  could  see  his  long  fin 
gers  beat  a  tattoo  on  his  thighs,  Newton  Winch  dan 
gled  and  swung  himself,  and  threw  back  his  head  and 
laughed.  "Well,  I  must  say  you  take  it  amazingly! 
— all  the  more  that  to  see  you  again  this  way  is  to  feel 
that  if,  all  along,  there  was  a  man  whose  delicacy  and 
confidence  and  general  attitude  might  have  marked 
him  for  a  particular  consideration,  you'd  have  been 
the  man."  And  they  were  more  directly  face  to  face 
again;  with  Newton  smiling  and  smiling  so  apprecia 
tively;  making  our  friend  in  fact  almost  ask  himself 
when  before  a  man  had  ever  grinned  from  ear  to  ear  to 
the  effect  of  its  so  becoming  him.  What  he  replied, 
however,  was  that  Newton  described  in  those  flatter 
ing  terms  a  client  temptingly  fatuous;  after  which,  and 

172 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

the  exchange  of  another  protest  or  two  in  the  interest 
of  justice  and  decency,  and  another  plea  or  two  in 
that  of  the  still  finer  contention  that  even  the  basest 
misdeeds  had  always  somewhere  or  other,  could  one 
get  at  it,  their  propitiatory  side,  our  hero  found  him 
self  on  his  feet  again,  under  the  influence  of  a  sudden 
failure  of  everything  but  horror — a  horror  determined 
by  some  turn  of  their  talk  and  indeed  by  the  very  fact 
of  the  freedom  of  it.  It  was  as  if  a  far-borne  sound  of 
the  hue  and  cry,  a  vision  of  his  old  friend  hunted  and 
at  bay,  had  suddenly  broken  in — this  other  friend's, 
this  irresistibly  intelligent  other  companion's,  practi 
cally  vivid  projection  of  that  making  the  worst  ugli 
ness  real.  "  Oh,  it's  just  making  my  wry  face  to  some 
body,  and  your  letting  me  and  caring  and  wanting  to 
know:  that,"  Mark  said,  "is  what  does  me  good;  not 
any  other  hideous  question.  I  mean  I  don't  take  any 
interest  in  my  case — what  one  wonders  about,  you  see, 
is  what  can  be  done  for  him.  I  mean,  that  is" — for 
he  floundered  a  little,  not  knowing  at  last  quite  what 
he  did  mean,  a  great  rush  of  mere  memories,  a  great 
humming  sound  as  of  thick,  thick  echoes,  rising  now  to 
an  assault  that  he  met  with  his  face  indeed  contorted. 
If  he  didn't  take  care  he  should  howl;  so  he  more  or 
less  successfully  took  care — yet  with  his  host  vividly 
watching  him  while  he  shook  the  danger  temporarily 
off.  "I  don't  mind — though  it's  rather  that;  my  hav 
ing  felt  this  morning,  after  three  dismal  dumb  bad 
days,  that  one's  friends  perhaps  would  be  thinking  of 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

one.  All  I'm  conscious  of  now — I  give  you  my  word 
—is  that  I'd  like  to  see  him." 

" You'd  like  to  see  him?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  say,"  Mark  ruefully  smiled,  "that  I 
should  like  him  to  see  me /" 

Newton  Winch,  from  where  he  stood — and  they  were 
together  now,  on  the  great  hearth-rug  that  was  a  tri 
umph  of  modern  orientalism — put  out  one  of  the  noted 
fine  hands  and,  with  an  expressive  headshake,  laid  it 
on  his  shoulder.  "Don't  wish  him  that,  Monteith — 
don't  wish  him  that!" 

"Well,  but," — and  Mark  raised  his  eyebrows  still 
higher — "he'd  see  I  bear  up;  pretty  well!" 

"God  forbid  he  should  see,  my  dear  fellow!"  New 
ton  cried  as  for  the  pang  of  it. 

Mark  had  for  his  idea,  at  any  rate,  the  oddest  sense 
of  an  exaltation  that  grew  by  this  use  of  frankness. 
"I'd  go  to  him.  Hanged  if  I  wouldn't — anywhere!" 

His  companion's  hand  still  rested  on  him.  "You'd 
go  to  him?" 

Mark  stood  up  to  it — though  trying  to  sink  solem 
nity  as  pretentious.  "I'd  go  like  a  shot."  And  then 
he  added:  "And  it's  probably  what — when  we've 
turned  round — I  shall  do." 

"When  'we'  have  turned  round?" 

"Well" — he  was  a  trifle  disconcerted  at  the  tone — 
"I  say  that  because  you'll  have  helped  me." 

"Oh,  I  do  nothing  but  want  to  help  you!"  Winch 
replied — which  made  it  right  again;  especially  as  our 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

friend  still  felt  himself  reassuringly  and  sustainingly 
grasped.  But  Winch  went  on:  "  You  would  go  to  him 
— in  kindness?" 

"Well— to  understand." 

"To  understand  how  he  could  swindle  you?" 

"Well,"  Mark  kept  on,  "to  try  and  make  out  with 
him  how,  after  such  things — !"  But  he  stopped;  he 
couldn't  name  them. 

It  was  as  if  his  companion  knew.  "Such  things  as 
you've  done  for  him  of  course — such  services  as  you've 
rendered  him." 

"Ah,  from  far  back.  If  I  could  tell  you,"  our  friend 
vainly  wailed — "if  I  could  tell  you!" 

Newton  Winch  patted  his  shoulder.  "Tell  me — 
tell  me!" 

"The  sort  of  relation,  I  mean;  ever  so  many  things 
of  a  kind — !"  Again,  however,  he  pulled  up;  he  felt 
the  tremor  of  his  voice. 

"Tell  me,  tell  me,"  Winch  repeated  with  the  same 
movement. 

The  tone  in  it  now  made  their  eyes  meet  again,  and 
with  this  presentation  of  the  altered  face  Mark  meas 
ured  as  not  before,  for  some  reason,  the  extent  of  the 
recent  ravage.  "You  must  have  been  ill  indeed." 

" Pretty  bad.  But  I'm  better.  And  you  do  me  good" 
— with  which  the  light  of  convalescence  came  back. 

"I  don't  awfully  bore  you?" 

Winch  shook  his  head.  "You  keep  me  up — and 
you  see  how  no  one  else  comes  near  me." 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

Mark's  eyes  made  out  that  he  was  better — though 
it  wasn't  yet  that  nothing  was  the  matter  with  him. 
If  there  was  ever  a  man  with  whom  there  was  still 
something  the  matter — !  Yet  one  couldn't  insist  on 
that,  and  meanwhile  he  clearly  did  want  company. 
"Then  there  we  are.  I  myself  had  no  one  to  go  to." 

"You  save  my  life,"  Newton  renewedly  grinned. 


VII 


"WELL,  it's  your  own  fault,"  Mark  replied  to  that, 
"if  you  make  me  take  advantage  of  you."  Winch 
had  withdrawn  his  hand,  which  was  back,  violently 
shaking  keys  or  money,  in  his  trousers  pocket;  and  in 
this  position  he  had  abruptly  a  pause,  a  sensible, 
absence,  that  might  have  represented  either  some  odd 
drop  of  attention,  some  turn-off  to  another  thought,  or 
just  simply  the  sudden  act  of  listening.  His  guest  had 
indeed  himself — under  suggestion — the  impression  of  a 
sound.  "Mayn't  you  perhaps — if  you  hear  something 
— have  a  call?" 

Mark  had  said  it  so  lightly,  however,  that  he  was 
the  more  struck  with  his  host's  appearing  to  turn  just 
paler;  and,  with  it,  the  latter  now  was  listening.  "You 
hear  something?" 

"I  thought  you  did."  Winch  himself,  on  Mark's 
own  pressure  of  the  outside  bell,  had  opened  the  door 
of  the  apartment — an  indication  then,  it  sufficiently 
appeared,  that  Sunday  afternoons  were  servants',  or 

176 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

attendants',  or  even  trained  nurses'  holidays.  It  had 
also  marked  the  stage  of  his  convalescence,  and  to 
that  extent — after  his  first  flush  of  surprise — had  but 
smoothed  Monteith's  way.  At  present  he  barely  gave 
further  attention;  detaching  himself  as  under  some 
odd  cross-impulse,  he  had  quitted  the  spot  and  then 
taken,  in  the  wide  room,  a  restless  turn — only,  how 
ever,  to  revert  in  a  moment  to  his  friend's  just-uttered 
deprecation  of  the  danger  of  boring  him.  "If  I  make 
you  take  advantage  of  me — that  is  blessedly  talk  to 
me — it's  exactly  what  I  want  to  do.  Talk  to  me — 
talk  to  me!"  He  positively  waved  it  on;  pulling  up 
again,  however,  in  his  own  talk,  to  say  with  a  certain 
urgency:  "Hadn't  you  better  sit  down?" 

Mark,  who  stayed  before  the  fire,  couldn't  but  excuse 
himself.  "Thanks — I'm  very  well  so.  I  think  of 
things  and  I  fidget." 

Winch  stood  a  moment  with  his  eyes  on  the  ground. 
"Are  you  very  sure?" 

"  Quite — I'm  all  right  if  you  don't  mind." 

"Then  as  you  like!"  With  which,  shaking  to  ex 
travagance  again  his  long  legs,  Newton  had  swung 
off — only  with  a  movement  that,  now  his  back  was 
turned,  affected  his  visitor  as  the  most  whimsical  of 
all  the  forms  of  his  rather  unnatural  manner.  He 
was  curiously  different  with  his  back  turned,  as  Mark 
now  for  the  first  time  saw  it — dangling  and  somewhat 
wavering,  as  from  an  excess  of  uncertainty  of  gait; 
and  this  impression  was  so  strange,  it  created  in  our 

177 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

friend,  uneasily  and  on  the  spot,  such  a  need  of  ex 
planation,  that  his  speech  was  stayed  long  enough  to 
give  Winch  time  to  turn  round  again.  The  latter  had 
indeed  by  this  moment  reached  one  of  the  limits  of 
the  place,  the  wide  studio  bay,  where  he  paused,  his 
back  to  the  light  and  his  face  afresh  presented,  to  let 
his  just  passingly  depressed  and  quickened  eyes  take 
in  as  much  as  possible  of  the  large  floor,  range  over 
it  with  such  brief  freedom  of  search  as  the  disposition 
of  the  furniture  permitted.  He  was  looking  for  some 
thing,  though  the  betrayed  reach  of  vision  was  but  of 
an  instant.  Mark  caught  it,  however,  and  with  his 
own  sensibility  all  in  vibration,  found  himself  feeling 
at  once  that  it  meant  something  and  that  what  it  meant 
was  connected  with  his  entertainer's  slightly  marked 
appeal  to  him,  the  appeal  of  a  moment  before,  not  to 
remain  standing.  Winch  knew  by  this  time  quite 
easily  enough  that  he  was  hanging  fire;  which  meant 
that  they  were  suddenly  facing  each  other  across  the 
wide  space  with  a  new  consciousness. 

Everything  had  changed — changed  extraordinarily 
with  the  mere  turning  of  that  gentleman's  back,  the 
treacherous  aspect  of  which  its  owner  couldn't  surely 
have  suspected.  If  the  question  was  of  the  pitch  of 
their  sensibility,  at  all  events,  it  wouldn't  be  Mark's 
that  should  vibrate  to  least  purpose.  Visibly  it  had 
come  to  his  host  that  something  had  within  the  few 
instants  remarkably  happened,  but  there  glimmered 
on  him  an  induction  that  still  made  him  keep  his  own 

178 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

manner.  Newton  himself  might  now  resort  to  any 
manner  he  liked.  His  eyes  had  raked  the  floor  to 
recover  the  position  of  something  dropped  or  mis 
placed,  and  something,  above  all,  awkward  or  com 
promising;  and  he  had  wanted  his  companion  not  to 
command  this  scene  from  the  hearth-rug,  the  hearth 
rug  where  he  had  been  just  before  holding  him,  hyp 
notising  him  to  blindness,  because  the  object  in  ques 
tion  would  there  be  most  exposed  to  sight.  Mark 
embraced  this  with  a  further  drop — while  the  appre 
hension  penetrated — of  his  power  to  go  on,  and  with 
an  immense  desire  at  the  same  time  that  his  eyes 
should  seem  only  to  look  at  his  friend;  who  broke  out 
now,  for  that  matter,  with  a  fresh  appeal.  "Aren't 
you  going  to  take  advantage  of  me,  man — aren't  you 
going  to  take  it?" 

Everything  had  changed,  we  have  noted,  and  noth 
ing  could  more  have  proved  it  than  the  fact  that,  by 
the  same  turn,  sincerity  of  desire  had  dropped  out  of 
Winch's  chords,  while  irritation,  sharp  and  almost 
imperious,  had  come  in.  "That's  because  he  sees  I 
see  something!"  Mark  said  to  himself;  but  he  had  no 
need  to  add  that  it  shouldn't  prevent  his  seeing  more 
— for  the  simple  reason  that,  in  a  miraculous  fashion, 
this  was  exactly  what  he  did  do  in  glaring  out  the 
harder.  It  was  beyond  explanation,  but  the  very  act 
of  blinking  thus  in  an  attempt  at  showy  steadiness 
became  one  and  the  same  thing  with  an  optical  excur 
sion  lasting  the  millionth  of  a  minute  and  making 

179 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

him  aware  that  the  edge  of  a  rug,  at  the  point  where 
an  arm-chair,  pushed  a  little  out  of  position,  over- 
straddled  it,  happened  just  not  wholly  to  have  covered 
in  something  small  and  queer,  neat  and  bright,  crooked 
and  compact,  in  spite  of  the  strong  toe-tip  surrepti 
tiously  applied  to  giving  it  the  right  lift.  Our  gentle 
man,  from  where  he  hovered,  and  while  looking 
straight  at  the  master  of  the  scene,  yet  saw,  as  by  the 
tiny  flash  of  a  reflection  from  fine  metal,  under  the 
chair.  What  he  recognised,  or  at  least  guessed  at,  as 
sinister,  made  him  for  a  moment  turn  cold,  and  that 
chill  was  on  him  while  Winch  again  addressed  him — 
as  differently  as  possible  from  any  manner  yet  used. 
"I  beg  of  you  in  God's  name  to  talk  to  me — to  talk 
to  me!" 

It  had  the  ring  of  pure  alarm  and  anguish,  but  was 
by  this  turn  at  least  more  human  than  the  dazzling 
glitter  of  intelligence  to  which  the  poor  man  had  up 
to  now  been  treating  him.  "It's  you,  my  good  friend, 
who  are  in  deep  trouble,"  Mark  was  accordingly  quick 
to  reply,  "and  I  ask  your  pardon  for  being  so  taken 
up  with  my  own  sorry  business." 

"Of  course  I'm  in  deep  trouble" — with  which 
Winch  came  nearer  again;  "but  turning  you  on  was 
exactly  what  I  wanted." 

Mark  Monteith,  at  this,  couldn't,  for  all  his  rising 
dismay,  but  laugh  out;  his  sense  of  the  ridiculous  so 
swallowed  up,  for  that  brief  convulsion,  his  sense  of 
the  sinister.  Of  such  covenience  in  pain,  it  seemed, 

180 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

was  the  fact  of  another's  pain,  and  of  so  much  worth 
again  disinterested  sympathy!  "Your  interest  was 
then ?" 

"My  interest  was  in  your  being  interesting.  For 
you  are!  And  my  nerves — !"  said  Newton  Winch  with 
a  face  from  which  the  mystifying  smile  had  vanished, 
yet  in  which  distinction,  as  Mark  so  persistently  appre 
ciated  it,  still  sat  in  the  midst  of  ravage. 

Mark  wondered  and  wondered — he  made  strange 
things  out.  "Your  nerves  have  needed  company." 
He  could  lay  his  hand  on  him  now,  even  as  shortly 
before  he  had  felt  Winch's  own  pressure  of  possession 
and  detention.  "As  good  for  you  yourself,  that — or 
still  better,"  he  went  on — "than  I  and  my  grievance 
were  to  have  found  you.  Talk  to  me,  talk  to  me, 
Newton  Winch!"  he  added  with  an  immense  inspira 
tion  of  charity. 

"That's  a  different  matter— that  others  but  too 
much  can  do!  But  I'll  say  this.  If  you  want  to  go 
to  Phil  Bloodgood !" 

"Well?"  said  Mark  as  he  stopped.  He  stopped, 
and  Mark  had  now  a  hand  on  each  of  his  shoulders 
and  held  him  at  arm's-length,  held  him  with  a  fine 
idea  that  was  not  disconnected  from  the  sight  of  the 
small  neat  weapon  he  had  been  fingering  in  the  low 
luxurious  morocco  chair — it  was  of  the  finest  orange 
colour — and  then  had  laid  beside  him  on  the  carpet; 
where,  after  he  had  admitted  his  visitor,  his  presence 
of  mind  coming  back  to  it  and  suggesting  that  he 

181 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

couldn't  pick  it  up  without  making  it  more  conspicu 
ous,  he  had  thought,  by  some  swing  of  the  foot  or 
other  casual  manoeuvre,  to  dissimulate  its  visibility. 

They  were  at  close  quarters  now  as  not  before  and 
Winch  perfectly  passive,  with  eyes  that  somehow  had 
no  shadow  of  a  secret  left  and  with  the  betrayal  to 
the  sentient  hands  that  grasped  him  of  an  intense,  an 
extraordinary  general  tremor.  To  Mark's  challenge 
he  opposed  afresh  a  brief  silence,  but  the  very  quality 
of  it,  with  his  face  speaking,  was  that  of  a  gaping 
wound.  "Well,  you  needn't  take  that  trouble.  You 
see  I'm  such  another." 

"Such  another  as  Phil ?" 

He  didn't  blink.  "I  don't  know  for  sure,  but  I 
guess  I'm  worse." 

"Do  you  mean  you're  guilty ?" 

"I  mean  I  shall  be  wanted.  Only  I've  stayed  to 
take  it." 

Mark  threw  back  his  head,  but  only  tightened  his 
hands.  He  inexpressibly  understood,  and  nothing  in 
life  had  ever  been  so  strange  and  dreadful  to  him  as 
his  thus  helping  himself  by  a  longer  and  straighter 
stretch,  as  it  were,  to  the  monstrous  sense  of  his  friend's 
"education."  It  had  been,  in  its  immeasurable  action, 
the  education  of  business,  of  which  the  fruits  were  all 
around  them.  Yet  prodigious  was  the  interest,  for 
prodigious  truly — it  seemed  to  loom  before  Mark — must 
have  been  the  system.  "To  'take'  it?"  he  echoed; 
and  then,  though  faltering  a  little,  "To  take  what?" 

182 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

He  had  scarce  spoken  when  a  long  sharp  sound 
shrilled  in  from  the  outer  door,  seeming  of  so  high  and 
peremptory  a  pitch  that  with  the  start  it  gave  him  his 
grasp  of  his  host's  shoulders  relaxed  an  instant,  though 
to  the  effect  of  no  movement  in  them  but  what  came 
from  just  a  sensibly  intenser  vibration  of  the  whole 
man.  "For  that!"  said  Newton  Winch. 

"Then  you've  known ?" 

"I've  expected.  You've  helped  me  to  wait."  And 
then  as  Mark  gave  an  ironic  wail:  "You've  tided  me 
over.  My  condition  has  wanted  somebody  or  some 
thing.  Therefore,  to  complete  this  service,  will  you 
be  so  good  as  to  open  the  door?" 

Deep  in  the  eyes  Mark  looked  him,  and  still  to  the 
detection  of  no  glimmer  of  the  earlier  man  in  the 
depths.  The  earlier  man  had  been  what  he  invidiously 
remembered — yet  would  he  had  been  the  whole  sim 
pler  story!  Then  he  moved  his  own  eyes  straight  to  the 
chair  under  which  the  revolver  lay  and  which  was  but 
a  couple  of  yards  away.  He  felt  his  companion  take 
this  consciousness  in,  and  it  determined  in  them  another 
long,  mute  exchange.  "What  do  you  mean  to  do?" 

"Nothing." 

"On  your  honour?" 

"My  'honour'?"  his  host  returned  with  an  accent 
that  he  felt  even  as  it  sounded  he  should  never  forget. 

It  brought  to  his  own  face  a  crimson  flush — he 
dropped  his  guarding  hands.  Then  as  for  a  last  look 
at  him:  "You're  wonderful!" 

183 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"  We  are  wonderful,"  said  Newton  Winch,  while,  sim 
ultaneously  with  the  words,  the  pressed  electric  bell  again 
and  for  a  longer  time  pierced  the  warm  cigaretted  air. 

Mark  turned,  threw  up  his  arms,  and  it  was  only 
when  he  had  passed  through  the  vestibule  and  laid 
his  hand  on  the  door-knob  that  the  horrible  noise 
dropped.  The  next  moment  he  was  face  to  face  with 
two  visitors,  a  nondescript  personage  in  a  high  hat 
and  an  astrakhan  collar  and  cuffs,  and  a  great  belted 
constable,  a  splendid  massive  New  York  " officer"  of 
the  type  he  had  had  occasion  to  wonder  at  much  again 
in  the  course  of  his  walk,  the  type  so  by  itself — his 
wide  observation  quite  suggested — among  those  of  the 
peacemakers  of  the  earth.  The  pair  stepped  straight 
in — no  word  was  said ;  but  as  he  closed  the  door  behind 
them  Mark  heard  the  infallible  crack  of  a  discharged 
pistol  and,  so  nearly  with  it  as  to  make  all  one  violence, 
the  sound  of  a  great  fall ;  things  the  effect  of  which  was 
to  lift  him,  as  it  were,  with  his  company,  across  the 
threshold  of  the  room  in  a  shorter  time  than  that  taken 
by  this  record  of  the  fact.  But  their  rush  availed 
little;  Newton  was  stretched  on  his  back  before  the 
fire;  he  had  held  the  weapon  horribly  to  his  temple, 
and  his  upturned  face  was  disfigured.  The  emissa 
ries  of  the  law,  looking  down  at  him,  exhaled  simulta 
neously  a  gruff  imprecation,  and  then  while  the  worthy 
in  the  high  hat  bent  over  the  subject  of  their  visit  the 
one  in  the  helmet  raised  a  severe  pair  of  eyes  to  Mark. 
" Don't  you  think,  sir,  you  might  have  prevented  it?" 

184 


A  ROUND  OF  VISITS 

Mark  took  a  hundred  things  in,  it  seemed  to  him — 
things  of  the  scene,  of  the  moment,  and  of  all  the 
strange  moments  before;  but  one  appearance  more 
vividly  even  than  the  others  stared  out  at  him.  "I 
really  think  I  must  practically  have  caused  it." 


185 


CRAPY   CORNELIA 


CRAPY    CORNELIA 
I 

'TVHREE  times  within  a  quarter  of  an  hour — shift- 
*•  ing  the  while  his  posture  on  his  chair  of  contem 
plation — had  he  looked  at  his  watch  as  for  its  final 
sharp  hint  that  he  should  decide,  that  he  should  get 
up.  His  seat  was  one  of  a  group  fairly  sequestered, 
unoccupied  save  for  his  own  presence,  and  from  where 
he  lingered  he  looked  off  at  a  stretch  of  lawn  fresh 
ened  by  recent  April  showers  and  on  which  sundry 
small  children  were  at  play.  The  trees,  the  shrubs, 
the  plants,  every  stem  and  twig  just  ruffled  as  by  the 
first  touch  of  the  light  finger  of  the  relenting  year, 
struck  him  as  standing  still  in  the  blest  hope  of  more 
of  the  same  caress;  the  quarter  about  him  held  its 
breath  after  the  fashion  of  the  child  who  waits  with 
the  rigour  of  an  open  mouth  and  shut  eyes  for  the 
promised  sensible  effect  of  his  having  been  good.  So, 
in  the  windless,  sun-warmed  air  of  the  beautiful  after 
noon,  the  Park  of  the  winter's  end  had  struck  White- 
Mason  as  waiting;  even  New  York,  under  such  an 
impression,  was  "good,"  good  enough — for  him;  its 
very  sounds  were  faint,  were  almost  sweet,  as  they 
reached  him  from  so  seemingly  far  beyond  the  wooded 

189 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

horizon  that  formed  the  remoter  limit  of  his  large 
shallow  glade.  The  tones  of  the  frolic  infants  ceased 
to  be  nondescript  and  harsh — were  in  fact  almost  as 
fresh  and  decent  as  the  frilled  and  puckered  and  rib 
boned  garb  of  the  little  girls,  which  had  always  a  way, 
in  those  parts,  of  so  portentously  flaunting  the  daugh 
ters  of  the  strange  native — that  is  of  the  overwhelm 
ingly  alien — populace  at  him. 

Not  that  these  things  in  particular  were  his  matter 
of  meditation  now;  he  had  wanted,  at  the  end  of  his 
walk,  to  sit  apart  a  little  and  think — and  had  been 
doing  that  for  twenty  minutes,  even  though  as  yet  to 
no  break  in  the  charm  of  procrastination.  But  he 
had  looked  without  seeing  and  listened  without  hear 
ing:  all  that  had  been  positive  for  him  was  that  he 
hadn't  failed  vaguely  to  feel.  He  had  felt  in  the  first 
place,  and  he  continued  to  feel — yes,  at  forty-eight 
quite  as  much  as  at  any  point  of  the  supposed  reign 
of  younger  intensities — the  great  spirit  of  the  air,  the 
fine  sense  of  the  season,  the  supreme  appeal  of  Nature, 
he  might  have  said,  to  his  time  of  life;  quite  as  if  she, 
easy,  indulgent,  indifferent,  cynical  Power,  were  offer 
ing  him  the  last  chance  it  would  rest  with  his  wit  or 
his  blood  to  embrace.  Then  with  that  he  had  been 
entertaining,  to  the  point  and  with  the  prolonged  con 
sequence  of  accepted  immobilization,  the  certitude  that 
if  he  did  call  on  Mrs.  Worthingham  and  find  her  at 
home  he  couldn't  in  justice  to  himself  not  put  to  her 
the  question  that  had  lapsed  the  other  time,  the  last 

190 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

time,  through  the  irritating  and  persistent,  even  if 
accidental,  presence  of  others.  What  friends  she  had 
— the  people  who  so  stupidly,  so  wantonly  stuck!  If 
they  should,  he  and  she,  come  to  an  understanding, 
that  would  presumably  have  to  include  certain  mem 
bers  of  her  singularly  ill-composed  circle,  in  whom 
it  was  incredible  to  him  that  he  should  ever  take  an 
interest.  This  defeat,  to  do  himself  justice — he  had 
bent  rather  predominantly  on  that,  you  see;  ideal 
justice  to  her,  with  her  possible  conception  of  what  it 
should  consist  of,  being  another  and  quite  a  different 
matter— he  had  had  the  fact  of  the  Sunday  afternoon 
to  thank  for;  she  didn't  "keep"  that  day  for  him, 
since  they  hadn't,  up  to  now,  quite  begun  to  cultivate 
the  appointment  or  assignation  founded  on  explicit 
sacrifices.  He  might  at  any  rate  look  to  find  this 
pleasant  practical  Wednesday — should  he  indeed,  at 
his  actual  rate,  stay  it  before  it  ebbed — more  liberally 
and  intendingly  given  him. 

The  sound  he  at  last  most  wittingly  distinguished 
in  his  nook  was  the  single  deep  note  of  half-past  five 
borne  to  him  from  some  high-perched  public  clock. 
He  finally  got  up  with  the  sense  that  the  time  from 
then  on  ought  at  least  to  be  felt  as  sacred  to  him.  At 
this  juncture  it  was — while  he  stood  there  shaking  his 
garments,  settling  his  hat,  his  necktie,  his  shirt-cuffs, 
fixing  the  high  polish  of  his  fine  shoes  as  if  for  some 
reflection  in  it  of  his  straight  and  spare  and  grizzled, 
his  refined  and  trimmed  and  dressed,  his  altogether 

191 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

distinguished  person,  that  of  a  gentleman  abundantly 
settled,  but  of  a  bachelor  markedly  nervous — at  this 
crisis  it  was,  doubtless,  that  he  at  once  most  measured 
and  least  resented  his  predicament.  If  he  should  go 
he  would  almost  to  a  certainty  find  her,  and  if  he  should 
find  her  he  would  almost  to  a  certainty  come  to  the 
point.  He  wouldn't  put  it  off  again — there  was  that 
high  consideration  for  him  of  justice  at  least  to  him 
self.  He  had  never  yet  denied  himself  anything  so 
apparently  fraught  with  possibilities  as  the  idea  of 
proposing  to  Mrs.  Worthingham — never  yet,  in  other 
words,  denied  himself  anything  he  had  so  distinctly 
wanted  to  do;  and  the  results  of  that  wisdom  had  re 
mained  for  him  precisely  the  precious  parts  of  experi 
ence.  Counting  only  the  offers  of  his  honourable 
hand,  these  had  been  on  three  remembered  occasions 
at  least  the  consequence  of  an  impulse  as  sharp  and  a 
self-respect  as  reasoned;  a  self-respect  that  hadn't  in 
the  least  suffered,  moreover,  from  the  failure  of  each 
appeal.  He  had  been  met  in  the  three  cases — the 
only  ones  he  at  all  compared  with  his  present  case — 
by  the  frank  confession  that  he  didn't  somehow,  charm 
ing  as  he  was,  cause  himself  to  be  superstitiously  be 
lieved  in;  and  the  lapse  of  life,  afterward,  had  cleared 
up  many  doubts. 

It  wouldn't  have  done,  he  eventually,  he  lucidly 
saw,  each  time  he  had  been  refused;  and  the  candour 
of  his  nature  was  such  that  he  could  live  to  think  of 
these  very  passages  as  a  proof  of  how  right  he  had 

192 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

been — right,  that  is,  to  have  put  himself  forward 
always,  by  the  happiest  instinct,  only  in  impossible 
conditions.  He  had  the  happy  consciousness  of  hav 
ing  exposed  the  important  question  to  the  crucial  test, 
and  of  having  escaped,  by  that  persistent  logic,  a 
grave  mistake.  What  better  proof  of  his  escape  than 
the  fact  that  he  was  now  free  to  renew  the  all-interest 
ing  inquiry,  and  should  be  exactly,  about  to  do  so  in 
different  and  better  conditions?  The  conditions  were 
better  by  as  much  more — as  much  more  of  his  career 
and  character,  of  his  situation,  his  reputation  he 
could  even  have  called  it,  of  his  knowledge  of  life,  of 
his  somewhat  extended  means,  of  his  possibly  aug 
mented  charm,  of  his  certainly  improved  mind  and 
temper — as  was  involved  in  the  actual  impending  set 
tlement.  Once  he  had  got  into  motion,  once  he  had 
crossed  the  Park  and  passed  out  of  it,  entering,  with 
very  little  space  to  traverse,  one  of  the  short  new 
streets  that  abutted  on  its  east  side,  his  step  became 
that  of  a  man  young  enough  to  find  confidence,  quite 
to  find  felicity,  in  the  sense,  in  almost  any  sense,  of 
action.  He  could  still  enjoy  almost  anything,  abso 
lutely  an  unpleasant  thing,  in  default  of  a  better,  that 
might  still  remind  him  he  wasn't  so  old.  The  stand 
ing  newness  of  everything  about  him  would,  it  was 
true,  have  weakened  this  cheer  by  too  much  presum 
ing  on  it;  Mrs.  Worthingham's  house,  before  which 
he  stopped,  had  that  gloss  of  new  money,  that  glare  of 
a  piece  fresh  from  the  mint  and  ringing  for  the  first 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

time  on  any  counter,  which  seems  to  claim  for  it,  in 
any  transaction,  something  more  than  the  "face" 
value. 

This  could  but  be  yet  more  the  case  for  the  impres 
sion  of  the  observer  introduced  and  committed.  On 
our  friend's  part  I  mean,  after  his  admission  and 
while  still  in  the  hall,  the  sense  of  the  general  shining 
immediacy,  of  the  still  unhushed  clamour  of  the 
shock,  was  perhaps  stronger  than  he  had  ever  known 
it.  That  broke  out  from  every  corner  as  the  high 
pitch  of  interest,  and  with  a  candour  that — no,  cer 
tainly — he  had  never  seen  equalled;  every  particular 
expensive  object  shrieking  at  him  in  its  artless  pride 
that  it  had  just  "come  home."  He  met  the  whole 
vision  with  something  of  the  grimace  produced  on 
persons  without  goggles  by  the  passage  from  a  shelter 
to  a  blinding  light;  and  if  he  had — by  a  perfectly  possi 
ble  chance — been  "snap-shotted"  on  the  spot,  would 
have  struck  you  as  showing  for  his  first  tribute  to  the 
temple  of  Mrs.  Worthingham's  charming  presence  a 
scowl  almost  of  anguish.  He  wasn't  constitutionally, 
it  may  at  once  be  explained  for  him,  a  goggled  person; 
and  he  was  condemned,  in  New  York,  to  this  frequent 
violence  of  transition — having  to  reckon  with  it  when 
ever  he  went  out,  as  who  should  say,  from  himself. 
The  high  pitch  of  interest,  to  his  taste,  was  the  pitch 
of  history,  the  pitch  of  acquired  and  earned  sugges 
tion,  the  pitch  of  association,  in  a  word;  so  that  he  lived 
by  preference,  incontestably,  if  not  in  a  rich  gloom, 

194 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

which  would  have  been  beyond  his  means  and  spirits, 
at  least  amid  objects  and  images  that  confessed  to  the 
tone  of  time. 

He  had  ever  felt  that  an  indispensable  presence — 
with  a  need  of  it  moreover  that  interfered  at  no  point 
with  his  gentle  habit,  not  to  say  his  subtle  art,  of  draw 
ing  out  what  was  left  him  of  his  youth,  of  thinly  and 
thriftily  spreading  the  rest  of  that  choicest  jam-pot  of 
the  cupboard  of  consciousness  over  the  remainder  of 
a  slice  of  life  still  possibly  thick  enough  to  bear  it;  or 
in  other  words  of  moving  the  melancholy  limits,  the 
significant  signs,  constantly  a  little  further  on,  very 
much  as  property-marks  or  staked  boundaries  are 
sometimes  stealthily  shifted  at  night.  He  positively 
cherished  in  fact,  as  against  the  too  inveterate  gesture 
of  distressfully  guarding  his  eyeballs — so  many  New 
York  aspects  seemed  to  keep  him  at  it — an  ideal  of 
adjusted  appreciation,  of  courageous  curiosity,  of  fairly 
letting  the  world  about  him,  a  world  of  constant 
breathless  renewals  and  merciless  substitutions,  make 
its  flaring  assault  on  its  own  inordinate  terms.  New 
ness  was  value  in  the  piece — for  the  acquisitor,  or  at 
least  sometimes  might  be,  even  though  the  act  of 
"blowing"  hard,  the  act  marking  a  heated  freshness 
of  arrival,  or  other  form  of  irruption,  could  never 
minister  to  the  peace  of  those  already  and  long  on  the 
field;  and  this  if  only  because  maturer  tone  was  after 
all  most  appreciable  and  most  consoling  when  one 
staggered  back  to  it,  wounded,  bleeding,  blinded,  from 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

the  riot  of  the  raw — or,  to  put  the  whole  experience 
more  prettily,  no  doubt,  from  excesses  of  light. 


II 


IF  he  went  in,  however,  with  something  of  his  more 
or  less  inevitable  scowl,  there  were  really,  at  the  mo 
ment,  two  rather  valid  reasons  for  screened  observa 
tion;  the  first  of  these  being  that  the  whole  place 
seemed  to  reflect  as  never  before  the  lustre  of  Mrs. 
Worthingham's  own  polished  and  prosperous  little 
person — to  smile,  it  struck  him,  with  her  smile,  to 
twinkle  not  only  with  the  gleam  of  her  lovely  teeth, 
but  with  that  of  all  her  rings  and  brooches  and  ban 
gles  and  other  gewgaws,  to  curl  and  spasmodically 
cluster  as  in  emulation  of  her  charming  complicated 
yellow  tresses,  to  surround  the  most  animated  of  pink- 
and-white,  of  ruffled  and  ribboned,  of  frilled  and  fes 
tooned  Dresden  china  shepherdesses  with  exactly  the 
right  system  of  rococo  curves  and  convolutions  and 
other  flourishes,  a  perfect  bower  of  painted  and  gilded 
and  moulded  conceits.  The  second  ground  of  this 
immediate  impression  of  scenic  extravagance,  almost 
as  if  the  curtain  rose  for  him  to  the  first  act  of  some 
small  and  expensively  mounted  comic  opera,  was  that 
she  hadn't,  after  all,  awaited  him  in  fond  singleness, 
but  had  again  just  a  trifle  inconsiderately  exposed  him 
to  the  drawback  of  having  to  reckon,  for  whatever 
design  he  might  amiably  entertain,  with  the  presence 

196 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

of  a  third  and  quite  superfluous  person,  a  small  black 
insignificant  but  none  the  less  oppressive  stranger.  It 
was  odd  how,  on  the  instant,  the  little  lady  engaged 
with  her  did  affect  him  as  comparatively  black — very 
much  as  if  that  had  absolutely,  in  such  a  medium,  to 
be  the  graceless  appearance  of  any  item  not  positively 
of  some  fresh  shade  of  a  light  colour  or  of  some  pretty 
pretension  to  a  charming  twist.  Any  witness  of  their 
meeting,  his  hostess  should  surely  have  felt,  would 
have  been  a  false  note  in  the  whole  rosy  glow;  but 
what  note  so  false  as  that  of  the  dingy  little  presence 
that  she  might  actually,  by  a  refinement  of  her  per 
haps  always  too  visible  study  of  effect,  have  provided 
as  a  positive  contrast  or  foil?  whose  name  and  inter 
vention,  moreover,  she  appeared  to  be  no  more  moved 
to  mention  and  account  for  than  she  might  have  been 
to  " present" — whether  as  stretched  at  her  feet  or  erect 
upon  disciplined  haunches — some  shaggy  old  domesti 
cated  terrier  or  poodle. 

Extraordinarily,  after  he  had  been  in  the  room  five 
minutes — a  space  of  time  during  which  his  fellow- 
visitor  had  neither  budged  nor  uttered  a  sound — he 
had  made  Mrs.  Worthingham  out  as  all  at  once  per 
fectly  pleased  to  see  him,  completely  aware  of  what 
he  had  most  in  mind,  and  singularly  serene  in  face  of 
his  sense  of  their  impediment.  It  was  as  if  for  all  the 
world  she  didn't  take  it  for  one,  the  immobility,  to 
say  nothing  of  the  seeming  equanimity,  of  their  tactless 
companion;  at  whom  meanwhile  indeed  our  friend 

197 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

himself,  after  his  first  ruffled  perception,  no  more 
adventured  a  look  than  if  advised  by  his  constitutional 
kindness  that  to  notice  her  in  any  degree  would  per 
force  be  ungraciously  to  glower.  He  talked  after  a 
fashion  with  the  woman  as  to  whose  power  to  please 
and  amuse  and  serve  him,  as  to  whose  really  quite 
organised  and  indicated  fitness  for  lighting  up  his 
autumn  afternoon  of  life  his  conviction  had  lately 
strained  itself  so  clear;  but  he  was  all  the  while  carry 
ing  on  an  intenser  exchange  with  his  own  spirit  and 
trying  to  read  into  the  charming  creature's  behaviour, 
as  he  could  only  call  it,  some  confirmation  of  his 
theory  that  she  also  had  her  inward  flutter  and  anx 
iously  counted  on  him.  He  found  support,  happily 
for  the  conviction  just  named,  in  the  idea,  at  no  mo 
ment  as  yet  really  repugnant  to  him,  the  idea  bound 
up  in  fact  with  the  finer  essence  of  her  appeal,  that  she 
had  her  own  vision  too  of  her  quality  and  her  price, 
and  that  the  last  appearance  she  would  have  liked  to 
bristle  with  was  that  of  being  forewarned  and  eager. 

He  had,  if  he  came  to  think  of  it,  scarce  definitely 
warned  her,  and  he  probably  wouldn't  have  taken  to 
her  so  consciously  in  the  first  instance  without  an 
appreciative  sense  that,  as  she  was  a  little  person  of 
twenty  superficial  graces,  so  she  was  also  a  little  person 
with  her  secret  pride.  She  might  just  have  planted 
her  mangy  lion — not  to  say  her  muzzled  house-dog — 
there  in  his  path  as  a  symbol  that  she  wasn't  cheap 
and  easy;  which  would  be  a  thing  he  couldn't  possibly 

198 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

wish  his  future  wife  to  have  shown  herself  in  advance, 
even  if  to  him  alone.  That  she  could  make  him  put 
himself  such  questions  was  precisely  part  of  the  attach 
ing  play  of  her  iridescent  surface,  the  shimmering 
interfusion  of  her  various  aspects;  that  of  her  youth 
with  her  independence — her  pecuniary  perhaps  in 
particular,  that  of  her  vivacity  with  her  beauty,  that 
of  her  facility  above  all  with  her  odd  novelty;  the 
high  modernity,  as  people  appeared  to  have  come  to 
call  it,  that  made  her  so  much  more  "knowing"  in 
some  directions  than  even  he,  man  of  the  world  as  he 
certainly  was,  could  pretend  to  be,  though  all  on  a 
basis  of  the  most  unconscious  and  instinctive  and 
luxurious  assumption.  She  was  "up"  to  everything, 
aware  of  everything — if  one  counted  from  a  short 
enough  time  back  (from  week  before  last,  say,  and  as 
if  quantities  of  history  had  burst  upon  the  world  within 
the  fortnight);  she  was  likewise  surprised  at  nothing, 
and  in  that  direction  one  might  reckon  as  far  ahead  as 
the  rest  of  her  lifetime,  or  at  any  rate  as  the  rest  of  his, 
which  was  all  that  would  concern  him:  it  was  as  if  the 
suitability  of  the  future  to  her  personal  and  rather 
pampered  tastes  was  what  she  most  took  for  granted, 
so  that  he  could  see  her,  for  all  her  Dresden-china 
shoes  and  her  flutter  of  wondrous  befrilled  contempo 
rary  skirts,  skip  by  the  side  of  the  coming  age  as  over 
the  floor  of  a  ball-room,  keeping  step  with  its  mon 
strous  stride  and  prepared  for  every  figure  of  the  dance. 
Her  outlook  took  form  to  him  suddenly  as  a  great 
199 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

square  sunny  window  that  hung  in  assured  fashion 
over  the  immensity  of  life.  There  rose  toward  it  as 
from  a  vast  swarming  plaza  a  high  tide  of  emotion  and 
sound;  yet  it  was  at  the  same  time  as  if  even  while  he 
looked  her  light  gemmed  hand,  flashing  on  him  in 
addition  to  those  other  things  the  perfect  polish  of  the 
prettiest  pink  finger-nails  in  the  world,  had  touched  a 
spring,  the  most  ingenious  of  ecent  devices  for  instant 
ease,  which  dropped  half  across  the  scene  a  soft- 
coloured  mechanical  blind,  a  fluttered,  fringed  awning 
of  charmingly  toned  silk,  such  as  would  make  a  bath 
of  cool  shade  for  the  favoured  friend  leaning  with  her 
there — that  is  for  the  happy  couple  itself — on  the  bal 
cony.  The  great  view  would  be  the  prospect  and 
privilege  of  the  very  state  he  coveted — since  didn't  he 
covet  it? — the  state  of  being  so  securely  at  her  side; 
while  the  wash  of  privacy,  as  one  might  count  it,  the 
broad  fine  brush  dipped  into  clear  umber  and  passed, 
full  and  wet,  straight  across  the  strong  scheme  of 
colour,  would  represent  the  security  itself,  all  the 
uplifted  inner  elegance,  the  condition,  so  ideal,  of 
being  shut  out  from  nothing  and  yet  of  having,  so 
gaily  and  breezily  aloft,  none  of  the  burden  or  worry 
of  anything.  Thus,  as  I  say,  for  our  friend,  the  place 
itself,  while  his  vivid  impression  lasted,  portentously 
opened  and  spread,  and  what  was  before  him  took,  to 
his  vision,  though  indeed  at  so  other  a  crisis,  the  form 
of  the  " glimmering  square"  of  the  poet;  yet,  for  a 
still  more  remarkable  fact,  with  an  incongruous  object 

200 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

usurping  at  a  given  instant  the  privilege  of  the  frame 
and  seeming,  even  as  he  looked,  to  block  the  view. 

The  incongruous  object  was  a  woman's  head, 
crowned  with  a  little  sparsely  feathered  black  hat, 
an  ornament  quite  unlike  those  the  women  mostly 
noticed  by  White-Mason  were  now  "wearing,"  and 
that  grew  and  grew,  that  came  nearer  and  nearer, 
while  it  met  his  eyes,  after  the  manner  of  images  in 
the  kinematograph.  It  had  presently  loomed  so  large 
that  he  saw  nothing  else — not  only  among  the  things 
at  a  considerable  distance,  the  things  Mrs.  Worthing- 
ham  would  eventually,  yet  unmistakably,  introduce 
him  to,  but  among  those  of  this  lady's  various  attri 
butes  and  appurtenances  as  to  which  he  had  been  in 
the  very  act  of  cultivating  his  consciousness.  It  was  in 
the  course  of  another  minute  the  most  extraordinary 
thing  in  the  world:  everything  had  altered,  dropped, 
darkened,  disappeared;  his  imagination  had  spread 
its  wings  only  to  feel  them  flop  all  grotesquely  at  its 
sides  as  he  recognised  in  his  hostess's  quiet  compan 
ion,  the  oppressive  alien  who  hadn't  indeed  interfered 
with  his  fanciful  flight,  though  she  had  prevented  his 
immediate  declaration  and  brought  about  the  thud, 
not  to  say  the  felt  violent  shock,  of  his  fall  to  earth, 
the  perfectly  plain  identity  of  Cornelia  Rasch.  It 
was  she  who  had  remained  there  at  attention;  it  was 
she  their  companion  hadn't  introduced;  it  was  she  he 
had  forborne  to  face  with  his  fear  of  incivility.  He 
stared  at  her — everything  else  went. 

201 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"Why  it  has  been  you  all  this  time?" 

Miss  Rasch  fairly  turned  pale.  "I  was  waiting  to 
see  if  you'd  know  me." 

"Ah,  my  dear  Cornelia" — he  came  straight  out 
with  it— "rather!" 

"Well,  it  isn't,"  she  returned  with  a  quick  change  to 
red  now,  "from  having  taken  much  time  to  look  at 
me!" 

She  smiled,  she  even  laughed,  but  he  could  see  how 
she  had  felt  his  unconsciousness,  poor  thing;  the  ac 
quaintance,  quite  the  friend  of  his  youth,  as  she  had 
been,  the  associate  of  his  childhood,  of  his  early  man 
hood,  of  his  middle  age  in  fact,  up  to  a  few  years  back, 
not  more  than  ten  at  the  most;  the  associate  too  of  so 
many  of  his  associates  and  of  almost  all  of  his  rela 
tions,  those  of  the  other  time,  those  who  had  mainly 
gone  for  ever;  the  person  in  short  whose  noted  dis 
appearance,  though  it  might  have  seemed  final,  had 
been  only  of  recent  seasons.  She  was  present  again 
now,  all  unexpectedly — he  had  heard  of  her  having  at 
last,  left  alone  after  successive  deaths  and  with  scant 
resources,  sought  economic  salvation  in  Europe,  the 
promised  land  of  American  thrift — she  was  present  as 
this  almost  ancient  and  this  oddly  unassertive  little 
rotund  figure  whom  one  seemed  no  more  obliged  to 
address  than  if  she  had  been  a  black  satin  ottoman 
"treated"  with  buttons  and  gimp;  a  class  of  object  as 
to  which  the  policy  of  blindness  was  imperative.  He 
felt  the  need  of  some  explanatory  plea,  and  before  he 

202 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

could  think  had  uttered  one  at  Mrs.  Worthingham's 
expense.  "Why,  you  see  we  weren't  introduced !" 

"No — but  I  didn't  suppose  I  should  have  to  be 
named  to  you." 

"Well,  my  dear  woman,  you  haven't — do  me  that 
justice!"  He  could  at  least  make  this  point.  "I  felt 
all  the  while — !"  However,  it  would  have  taken  him 
long  to  say  what  he  had  been  feeling;  and  he  was 
aware  now  of  the  pretty  projected  light  of  Mrs.  Worth 
ingham's  wonder.  She  looked  as  if,  out  for  a  walk 
with  her,  he  had  put  her  to  the  inconvenience  of  his 
stopping  to  speak  to  a  strange  woman  in  the  street. 

"I  never  supposed  you  knew  her!" — it  was  to  him 
his  hostess  excused  herself. 

This  made  Miss  Rasch  spring  up,  distinctly  flushed, 
distinctly  strange  to  behold,  but  not  vulgarly  nettled 
— Cornelia  was  incapable  of  that;  only  rather  funnily 
bridling  and  laughing,  only  showing  that  this  was  all 
she  had  waited  for,  only  saying  just  the  right  thing,  the 
thing  she  could  make  so  clearly  a  jest.  "  Of  course  if 
you  had  you'd  have  presented  him." 

Mrs.  Worthingham  looked  while  answering  at  White- 
Mason.  "I  didn't  want  you  to  go — which  you  see 
you  do  as  soon  as  he  speaks  to  you.  But  I  never 
dreamed !" 

"That  there  was  anything  between  us?  Ah,  there 
are  no  end  of  things!"  He,  on  his  side,  though  ad 
dressing  the  younger  and  prettier  woman,  looked  at 
his  fellow-guest;  to  whom  he  even  continued:  "When 

203 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

did  you  get  back?    May  I  come  and  see  you  the  very 
first  thing?" 

Cornelia  gasped  and  wriggled — she  practically  gig 
gled;  she  had  lost  every  atom  of  her  little  old,  her 
little  young,  though  always  unaccountable  prettiness, 
which  used  to  peep  so,  on  the  bare  chance  of  a  shot, 
from  behind  indefensible  features,  that  it  almost  made 
watching  her  a  form  of  sport.  He  had  heard  vaguely 
of  her,  it  came  back  to  him  (for  there  had  been  no  let 
ters;  their  later  acquaintance,  thank  goodness,  hadn't 
involved  that)  as  experimenting,  for  economy,  and 
then  as  settling,  to  the  same  rather  dismal  end,  some 
where  in  England,  at  one  of  those  intensely  English 
places,  St.  Leonards,  Cheltenham,  Bognor,  Dawlish 
— which,  awfully,  was  it?" — and  she  now  affected  him 
for  all  the  world  as  some  small  squirming,  exclaiming, 
genteelly  conversing  old  maid  of  a  type  vaguely  asso 
ciated  with  the  three-volume  novels  he  used  to  feed  on 
(besides  his  so  often  encountering  it  in  "real  life,") 
during  a  far-away  stay  of  his  own  at  Brighton.  Odder 
than  any  element  of  his  ex-gossip's  identity  itself,  how 
ever,  was  the  fact  that  she  somehow,  with  it  all,  re 
joiced  his  sight.  Indeed  the  supreme  oddity  was  that 
the  manner  of  her  reply  to  his  request  for  leave  to  call 
should  have  absolutely  charmed  his  attention.  She 
didn't  look  at  him;  she  only,  from  under  her  frumpy, 
crapy,  curiously  exotic  hat,  and  with  her  good  little 
near-sighted  insinuating  glare,  expressed  to  Mrs.  Worth- 
ingham,  while  she  answered  him.  wonderful  arch  things, 

204 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

the  overdone  things  of  a  shy  woman.  "Yes,  you  may 
call — but  only  when  this  dear  lovely  lady  has  done 
with  you!"  The  moment  after  which  she  had  gone. 


Ill 


FORTY  minutes  later  he  was  taking  his  way  back 
from  the  queer  miscarriage  of  his  adventure;  taking  it, 
with  no  conscious  positive  felicity,  through  the  very 
spaces  that  had  witnessed  shortly  before  the  consider 
able  serenity  of  his  assurance.  He  had  said  to  himself 
then,  or  had  as  good  as  said  it,  that,  since  he  might 
do  perfectly  as  he  liked,  it  couldn't  fail  for  him  that  he 
must  soon  retrace  those  steps,  humming,  to  all  intents, 
the  first  bars  of  a  wedding-march;  so  beautifully  had 
it  cleared  up  that  he  was  "going  to  like"  letting  Mrs. 
Worthingham  accept  him.  He  was  to  have  hummed 
no  wedding-march,  as  it  seemed  to  be  turning  out — 
he  had  none,  up  to  now,  to  hum;  and  yet,  extraordi 
narily,  it  wasn't  in  the  least  because  she  had  refused 
him.  Why  then  hadn't  he  liked  as  much  as  he  had 
intended  to  like  it  putting  the  pleasant  act,  the  act  of 
not  refusing  him,  in  her  power?  Could  it  all  have 
come  from  the  awkward  minute  of  his  failure  to  decide 
sharply,  on  Cornelia's  departure,  whether  or  no  he 
would  attend  her  to  the  door?  He  hadn't  decided  at 
all — what  the  deuce  had  been  in  him? — but  had 
danced  to  and  fro  in  the  room,  thinking  better  of  each 
impulse  and  then  thinking  worse.  He  had  hesitated 

205 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

like  an  ass  erect  on  absurd  hind  legs  between  two 
bundles  of  hay;  the  upshot  of  which  must  have  been 
his  giving  the  falsest  impression.  In  what  way  that 
was  to  be  for  an  instant  considered  had  their  common 
past  committed  him  to  crapy  Cornelia?  He  repudi 
ated  with  a  whack  on  the  gravel  any  ghost  of  an  obli 
gation. 

What  he  could  get  rid  of  with  scanter  success,  un 
fortunately,  was  the  peculiar  sharpness  of  his  sense 
that,  though  mystified  by  his  visible  flurry — and  yet 
not  mystified  enough  for  a  sympathetic  question  either 
—his  hostess  had  been,  on  the  whole,  even  more 
frankly  diverted:  which  was  precisely  an  example  of 
that  newest,  freshest,  finest  freedom  in  her,  the  air 
and  the  candour  of  assuming,  not  "heartlessly,"  not 
viciously,  not  even  very  consciously,  but  with  a  bright 
pampered  confidence  which  would  probably  end  by 
affecting  one's  nerves  as  the  most  impertinent  stroke 
in  the  world,  that  every  blest  thing  coming  up  for  her 
in  any  connection  was  somehow  matter  for  her  general 
recreation.  There  she  was  again  with  the  innocent 
egotism,  the  gilded  and  overflowing  anarchism,  really, 
of  her  doubtless  quite  unwitting  but  none  the  less  rabid 
modern  note.  Her  grace  of  ease  was  perfect,  but  it 
was  all  grace  of  ease,  not  a  single  shred  of  it  grace  of 
uncertainty  or  of  difficulty — which  meant,  when  you 
came  to  see,  that,  for  its  happy  working,  not  a  grain 
of  provision  was  left  by  it  to  mere  manners.  This 
was  clearly  going  to  be  the  music  of  the  future — that 

206 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

if  people  were  but  rich  enough  and  furnished  enough 
and  fed  enough,  exercised  and  sanitated  and  mani 
cured  and  generally  advised  and  advertised  and  made 
" knowing"  enough,  avertis  enough,  as  the  term  ap 
peared  to  be  nowadays  in  Paris,  all  they  had  to  do  for 
civility  was  to  take  the  amused  ironic  view  of  those 
who  might  be  less  initiated.  In  his  time,  when  he 
was  young  or  even  when  he  was  only  but  a  little  less 
middle-aged,  the  best  manners  had  been  the  best  kind 
ness,  and  the  best  kindness  had  mostly  been  some  art 
of  not  insisting  on  one's  luxurious  differences,  of  con 
cealing  rather,  for  common  humanity,  if  not  for  com 
mon  decency,  a  part  at  least  of  the  intensity  or  the 
ferocity  with  which  one  might  be  "in  the  know." 

Oh,  the  "know" — Mrs.  Worthingham  was  in  it,  all 
instinctively,  inevitably,  and  as  a  matter  of  course,  up 
to  her  eyes;  which  didn't,  however,  the  least  little  bit 
prevent  her  being  as  ignorant  as  a  fish  of  everything 
that  really  and  intimately  and  fundamentally  con 
cerned  him,  poor  dear  old  White-Mason.  She  didn't, 
in  the  first  place,  so  much  as  know  who  he  was — by 
which  he  meant  know  who  and  what  it  was  to  be  a 
White-Mason,  even  a  poor  and  a  dear  and  old  one, 
"anyway."  That  indeed — he  did  her  perfect  justice 
— was  of  the  very  essence  of  the  newness  and  freshness 
and  beautiful,  brave,  social  irresponsibility  by  which 
she  had  originally  dazzled  him:  just  exactly  that  cir 
cumstance  of  her  having  no  instinct  for  any  old  quality 
or  quantity  or  identity,  a  single  historic  or  social 

207 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

value,  as  he  might  say,  of  the  New  York  of  his  already 
almost  legendary  past;  and  that  additional  one  of  his, 
on  his  side,  having,  so  far  as  this  went,  cultivated 
blankness,  cultivated  positive  prudence,  as  to  her  own 
personal  background — the  vagueness,  at  the  best,  with 
which  all  honest  gentlefolk,  the  New  Yorkers  of  his 
approved  stock  and  conservative  generation,  were  con 
tent,  as  for  the  most  part  they  were  indubitably  wise, 
to  surround  the  origins  and  antecedents  and  queer  un 
imaginable  early  influences  of  persons  swimming  into 
their  ken  from  those  parts  of  the  country  that  quite 
necessarily  and  naturally  figured  to  their  view  as  "  God 
forsaken"  and  generally  impossible. 

The  few  scattered  surviving  representatives  of  a 
society  once  "good" — rari  nantes  in  gurgite  vasto — 
were  liable,  at  the  pass  things  had  come  to,  to  meet, 
and  even  amid  old  shades  once  sacred,  or  what  was 
left  of  such,  every  form  of  social  impossibility,  and, 
more  irresistibly  still,  to  find  these  apparitions  often 
carry  themselves  (often  at  least  in  the  case  of  the 
women)  with  a  wondrous  wild  gallantry,  equally  im 
perturbable  and  inimitable,  the  sort  of  thing  that 
reached  its  maximum  in  Mrs.  Worthingham.  Beyond 
that  who  ever  wanted  to  look  up  their  annals,  to  re 
construct  their  steps  and  stages,  to  dot  their  i's  in  fine, 
or  to  "go  behind"  anything  that  was  theirs?  One 
wouldn't  do  that  for  the  world — a  rudimentary  discre 
tion  forbade  it;  and  yet  this  check  from  elementary 
undiscussable  taste  quite  consorted  with  a  due  respect 

208 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

for  them,  or  at  any  rate  with  a  due  respect  for  one 
self  in  connection  with  them;  as  was  just  exemplified 
in  what  would  be  his  own,  what  would  be  poor  dear 
old  White-Mason's,  insurmountable  aversion  to  hav 
ing,  on  any  pretext,  the  doubtless  very  queer  spectre 
of  the  late  Mr.  Worthingham  presented  to  him.  No 
question  had  he  asked,  or  would  he  ever  ask,  should 
his  life — that  is  should  the  success  of  his  courtship — 
even  intimately  depend  on  it,  either  about  that  obscure 
agent  of  his  mistress's  actual  affluence  or  about  the 
happy  head-spring  itself,  and  the  apparently  copious 
tributaries,  of  the  golden  stream. 

From  all  which  marked  anomalies,  at  any  rate, 
what  was  the  moral  to  draw?  He  dropped  into  a 
Park  chair  again  with  that  question,  he  lost  himself 
in  the  wonder  of  why  he  had  come  away  with  his 
homage  so  very  much  unpaid.  Yet  it  didn't  seem  at 
all,  actually,  as  if  he  could  say  or  conclude,  as  if  he 
could  do  anything  but  keep  on  worrying — just  in  con 
formity  with  his  being  a  person  who,  whether  or  no 
familiar  with  the  need  to  make  his  conduct  square 
with  his  conscience  and  his  taste,  was  never  wholly 
exempt  from  that  of  making  his  taste  and  his  con 
science  square  with  his  conduct.  To  this  latter  occu 
pation  he  further  abandoned  himself,  and  it  didn't 
release  him  from  his  second  brooding  session  till  the 
sweet  spring  sunset  had  begun  to  gather  and  he  had 
more  or  less  cleared  up,  in  the  deepening  dusk,  the 
effective  relation  between  the  various  parts  of  his 

209 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

ridiculously  agitating  experience.  There  were  vital 
facts  he  seemed  thus  to  catch,  to  seize,  with  a  ner 
vous  hand,  and  the  twilight  helping,  by  their  vaguely 
whisked  tails;  unquiet  truths  that  swarmed  out  after 
the  fashion  of  creatures  bold  only  at  eventide,  crea 
tures  that  hovered  and  circled,  that  verily  brushed  his 
nose,  in  spite  of  their  shyness.  Yes,  he  had  practi 
cally  just  sat  on  with  his  "mistress" — heaven  save 
the  mark! — as  if  not  to  come  to  the  point;  as  if  it  had 
absolutely  come  up  that  there  would  be  something 
rather  vulgar  and  awful  in  doing  so.  The  whole 
stretch  of  his  stay  after  Cornelia's  withdrawal  had 
been  consumed  by  his  almost  ostentatiously  treating 
himself  to  the  opportunity  of  which  he  was  to  make 
nothing.  It  was  as  if  he  had  sat  and  watched  him 
self — that  came  back  to  him:  Shall  I  now  or  sha'n't 
I?  Will  I  now  or  won't  I?  "Say  within  the  next 
three  minutes,  say  by  a  quarter  past  six,  or  by  twenty 
minutes  past,  at  the  furthest — always  if  nothing  more 
comes  up  to  prevent." 

What  had  already  come  up  to  prevent  was,  in 
the  strangest  and  drollest,  or  at  least  in  the  most  pre 
posterous,  way  in  the  world,  that  not  Cornelia's  pres 
ence,  but  her  very  absence,  with  its  distraction  of  his 
thoughts,  the  thoughts  that  lumbered  after  her,  had 
made  the  difference;  and  without  his  being  the  least 
able  to  tell  why  and  how.  He  put  it  to  himself  after 
a  fashion  by  the  image  that,  this  distraction  once 
created,  his  working  round  to  his  hostess  again,  his 

210 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

reverting  to  the  matter  of  his  errand,  began  suddenly 
to  represent  a  return  from  so  far.  That  was  simply 
all — or  rather  a  little  less  than  all;  for  something  else 
had  contributed.  "I  never  dreamed  you  knew  her," 
and  "I  never  dreamed  you  did,"  were  inevitably  what 
had  been  exchanged  between  them — supplemented  by 
Mrs.  Worthingham's  mere  scrap  of  an  explanation: 
"Oh  yes — to  the  small  extent  you  see.  Two  years 
ago  in  Switzerland  when  I  was  at  a  high  place  for  an 
'aftercure/  during  twenty  days  of  incessant  rain,  she 
was  the  only  person  in  an  hotel  full  of  roaring,  gorg 
ing,  smoking  Germans  with  whom  I  could  have  a 
word  of  talk.  She  and  I  were  the  only  speakers  of 
English,  and  were  thrown  together  like  castaways  on 
a  desert  island  and  in  a  raging  storm.  She  was  ill 
besides,  and  she  had  no  maid,  and  mine  looked  after 
her,  and  she  was  very  grateful — writing  to  me  later 
on  and  saying  she  should  certainly  come  to  see  me  if 
she  ever  returned  to  New  York.  She  has  returned, 
you  see — and  there  she  was,  poor  little  creature!" 
Such  was  Mrs.  Worthingham's  tribute — to  which  even 
his  asking  her  if  Miss  Rasch  had  ever  happened  to 
speak  of  him  caused  her  practically  to  add  nothing. 
Visibly  she  had  never  thought  again  of  any  one  Miss 
Rasch  had  spoken  of  or  anything  Miss  Rasch  had 
said;  right  as  she  was,  naturally,  about  her  being  a 
little  clever  queer  creature.  This  was  perfectly  true, 
and  yet  it  was  probably — by  being  all  she  could  dream 
of  about  her — what  had  paralysed  his  proper  gallan- 

211 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

try.  Its  effect  had  been  not  in  what  it  simply  stated, 
but  in  what,  under  his  secretly  disintegrating  criticism, 
it  almost  luridly  symbolised. 

He  had  quitted  his  seat  in  the  Louis  Quinze  draw 
ing-room  without  having,  as  he  would  have  described 
it,  done  anything  but  give  the  lady  of  the  scene  a  supe 
rior  chance  not  to  betray  a  defeated  hope — not,  that  is, 
to  fail  of  the  famous  "pride"  mostly  supposed  to  prop 
even  the  most  infatuated  women  at  such  junctures; 
by  which  chance,  to  do  her  justice,  she  had  thoroughly 
seemed  to  profit.  But  he  finally  rose  from  his  later 
station  with  a  feeling  of  better  success.  He  had  by  a 
happy  turn  of  his  hand  got  hold  of  the  most  precious, 
the  least  obscure  of  the  flitting,  circling  things  that 
brushed  his  ears.  What  he  wanted — as  justifying  for 
him  a  little  further  consideration — was  there  before 
him  from  the  moment  he  could  put  it  that  Mrs.  Worth- 
ingham  had  no  data.  He  almost  hugged  that  word- 
it  suddenly  came  to  mean  so  much  to  him.  No  data, 
he  felt,  for  a  conception  of  the  sort  of  thing  the  New 
York  of  "his  time"  had  been  in  his  personal  life— 
the  New  York  so  unexpectedly,  so  vividly  and,  as  he 
might  say,  so  perversely  called  back  to  all  his  senses 
by  its  identity  with  that  of  poor  Cornelia's  time:  since 
even  she  had  had  a  time,  small  show  as  it  was  likely  to 
make  now,  and  his  time  and  hers  had  been  the  same. 
Cornelia  figured  to  him  while  he  walked  away  as,  by 
contrast  and  opposition,  a  massive  little  bundle  of 
data;  his  impatience  to  go  to  see  her  sharpened  as  he 

212 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

thought  of  this:  so  certainly  should  he  find  out  that 
wherever  he  might  touch  her,  with  a  gentle  though 
firm  pressure,  he  would,  as  the  fond  visitor  of  old 
houses  taps  and  fingers  a  disfeatured,  overpapered 
wall  with  the  conviction  of  a  wainscot-edge  beneath, 
recognise  some  small  extrusion  of  history. 

IV 

THERE  would  have  been  a  wonder  for  us  mean 
while  in  his  continued  use,  as  it  were,  of  his  happy 
formula — brought  out  to  Cornelia  Rasch  within  ten 
minutes,  or  perhaps  only  within  twenty,  of  his  having 
settled  into  the  quite  comfortable  chair  that,  two  days 
later,  she  indicated  to  him  by  her  fireside.  He  had 
arrived  at  her  address  through  the  fortunate  chance 
of  his  having  noticed  her  card,  as  he  went  out,  depos 
ited,  in  the  good  old  New  York  fashion,  on  one  of  the 
rococo  tables  of  Mrs.  Worthingham's  hall.  His  eye 
had  been  caught  by  the  pencilled  indication  that  was 
to  affect  him,  the  next  instant,  as  fairly  placed  there 
for  his  sake.  This  had  really  been  his  luck,  for  he 
shouldn't  have  liked  to  write  to  Mrs.  Worthingham 
for  guidance — that  he  felt,  though  too  impatient  just 
now  to  analyze  the  reluctance.  There  was  nobody 
else  he  could  have  approached  for  a  clue,  and  with 
this  reflection  he  was  already  aware  of  how  it  testified 
to  their  rare  little  position,  his  and  Cornelia's — posi 
tion  as  conscious,  ironic,  pathetic  survivors  together 
of  a  dead  and  buried  society — that  there  would  have 

213 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

been,  in  all  the  town,  under  such  stress,  not  a  member 
of  their  old  circle  left  to  turn  to.  Mrs.  Worthingham 
had  practically,  even  if  accidentally,  helped  him  to 
knowledge;  the  last  nail  in  the  coffin  of  the  poor  dear 
extinct  past  had  been  planted  for  him  by  his  having 
thus  to  reach  his  antique  contemporary  through  per 
foration  of  the  newest  newness.  The  note  of  this  par 
ticular  recognition  was  in  fact  the  more  prescribed  to 
him  that  the  ground  of  Cornelia's  return  to  a  scene 
swept  so  bare  of  the  associational  charm  was  certainly 
inconspicuous.  What  had  she  then  come  back  for? — 
he  had  asked  himself  that;  with  the  effect  of  deciding 
that  it  probably  would  have  been,  a  little,  to  "look 
after"  her  remnant  of  property.  Perhaps  she  had 
come  to  save  what  little  might  still  remain  of  that 
shrivelled  interest;  perhaps  she  had  been,  by  those 
who  took  care  of  it  for  her,  further  swindled  and 
despoiled,  so  that  she  wished  to  get  at  the  facts.  Per 
haps  on  the  other  hand — it  was  a  more  cheerful  chance 
— her  investments,  decently  administered,  were  mak 
ing  larger  returns,  so  that  the  rigorous  thrift  of  Bognor 
could  be  finally  relaxed. 

He  had  little  to  learn  about  the  attraction  of  Europe, 
and  rather  expected  that  in  the  event  of  his  union  with 
Mrs  Worthingham  he  should  find  himself  pleading 
for  it  with  the  competence  of  one  more  in  the  "know" 
about  Paris  and  Rome,  about  Venice  and  Florence, 
than  even  she  could  be.  He  could  have  lived  on  in 
his  New  York,  that  is  in  the  sentimental,  the  spiritual, 

214 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

the  more  or  less  romantic  visitation  of  it;  but  had  it 
been  positive  for  him  that  he  could  live  on  in  hers? — 
unless  indeed  the  possibility  of  this  had  been  just 
(like  the  famous  vertige  de  Vablme,  like  the  solicitation 
of  danger,  or  otherwise  of  the  dreadful)  the  very  hinge 
of  his  whole  dream.  However  that  might  be,  his 
curiosity  was  occupied  rather  with  the  conceivable 
hinge  of  poor  Cornelia's:  it  was  perhaps  thinkable 
that  even  Mrs.  Worthingham's  New  York,  once  it 
should  have  become  possible  again  at  all,  might  have 
put  forth  to  this  lone  exile  a  plea  that  wouldn't  be  in 
the  chords  of  Bognor.  For  himself,  after  all,  too,  the 
attraction  had  been  much  more  of  the  Europe  over 
which  one  might  move  at  one's  ease,  and  which  there 
fore  could  but  cost,  and  cost  much,  right  and  left,  than 
of  the  Europe  adapted  to  scrimping.  He  saw  himself 
on  the  whole  scrimping  with  more  zest  even  in  Mrs. 
Worthingham's  New  York  than  under  the  inspiration 
of  Bognor.  Apart  from  which  it  was  yet  again  odd, 
not  to  say  perceptibly  pleasing  to  him,  to  note  where 
the  emphasis  of  his  interest  fell  in  this  fumble  of  fancy 
over  such  felt  oppositions  as  the  new,  the  latest,  the 
luridest  power  of  money  and  the  ancient  reserves  and 
moderations  and  mediocrities.  These  last  struck  him 
as  showing  by  contrast  the  old  brown  surface  and  tone 
as  of  velvet  rubbed  and  worn,  shabby,  and  even  a  bit 
dingy,  but  all  soft  and  subtle  and  still  velvety — which 
meant  still  dignified;  whereas  the  angular  facts  of  cur 
rent  finance  were  as  harsh  and  metallic  and  bewilder- 

215 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

ing  as  some  stacked  " exhibit"  of  ugly  patented  inven 
tions,  things  his  mediaeval  mind  forbade  his  taking  in. 
He  had  for  instance  the  sense  of  knowing  the  pleasant 
little  old  Rasch  fortune — pleasant  as  far  as  it  went; 
blurred  memories  and  impressions  of  what  it  had  been 
and  what  it  hadn't,  of  how  it  had  grown  and  how  lan 
guished  and  how  melted;  they  came  back  to  him  and 
put  on  such  vividness  that  he  could  almost  have  figured 
himself  testify  for  them  before  a  bland  and  encourag 
ing  Board.  The  idea  of  taking  the  field  in  any  man 
ner  on  the  subject  of  Mrs.  Worthingham's  resources 
would  have  affected  him  on  the  other  hand  as  an 
odious  ordeal,  some  glare  of  embarrassment  and  expo 
sure  in  a  circle  of  hard  unhelpful  attention,  of  con 
verging,  derisive,  unsuggestive  eyes. 

In  Cornelia's  small  and  quite  cynically  modern  flat 
— the  house  had  a  grotesque  name,  "The  Gainsbor 
ough,"  but  at  least  wasn't  an  awful  boarding-house,  as 
he  had  feared,  and  she  could  receive  him  quite  honour 
ably,  which  was  so  much  to  the  good — he  would  have 
been  ready  to  use  at  once  to  her  the  greatest  freedom 
of  friendly  allusion:  "Have  you  still  your  old  'family 
interest'  in  those  two  houses  in  Seventh  Avenue? — one 
of  which  was  next  to  a  corner  grocery,  don't  you 
know?  and  was  occupied  as  to  its  lower  part  by  a 
candy-shop  where  the  proportion  of  the  stock  of  sus- 
pectedly  stale  popcorn  to  that  of  rarer  and  stickier  joys 
betrayed  perhaps  a  modest  capital  on  the  part  of  your 
father's,  your  grandfather's,  or  whoever's  tenant,  but 

216 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

out  of  which  I  nevertheless  remember  once  to  have 
come  as  out  of  a  bath  of  sweets,  with  my  very  gar 
ments,  and  even  the  separate  hairs  of  my  head,  glued 
together.  The  other  of  the  pair,  a  tobacconist's,  fur 
ther  down,  had  before  it  a  wonderful  huge  Indian  who 
thrust  out  wooden  cigars  at  an  indifferent  world — you 
could  buy  candy  cigars  too,  at  the  pop-corn  shop,  and  I 
greatly  preferred  them  to  the  wooden;  I  remember 
well  how  I  used  to  gape  in  fascination  at  the  Indian 
and  wonder  if  the  last  of  the  Mohicans  was  like  him; 
besides  admiring  so  the  resources  of  a  family  whose 
'property'  was  in  such  forms.  I  haven't  been  round 
there  lately — we  must  go  round  together;  but  don't  tell 
me  the  forms  have  utterly  perished!"  It  was  after 
that  fashion  he  might  easily  have  been  moved,  and 
with  almost  no  transition,  to  break  out  to  Cornelia— 
quite  as  if  taking  up  some  old  talk,  some  old  commun 
ity  of  gossip,  just  where  they  had  left  it;  even  with  the 
consciousness  perhaps  of  overdoing  a  little,  of  putting 
at  its  maximum,  for  the  present  harmony,  recovery, 
recapture  (what  should  he  call  it  ?)  the  pitch  and  quan 
tity  of  what  the  past  had  held  for  them. 

He  didn't  in  fact,  no  doubt,  dart  straight  off  to  Sev 
enth  Avenue,  there  being  too  many  other  old  things 
and  much  nearer  and  long  subsequent;  the  point  was 
only  that  for  everything  they  spoke  of  after  he  had 
fairly  begun  to  lean  back  and  stretch  his  legs,  and 
after  she  had  let  him,  above  all,  light  the  first  of  a  suc 
cession  of  cigarettes — for  everything  they  spoke  of  he 

217 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

positively  cultivated  extravagance  and  excess,  piling  up 
the  crackling  twigs  as  on  the  very  altar  of  memory; 
and  that  by  the  end  of  half  an  hour  she  had  lent  her 
self,  all  gallantly,  to  their  game.  It  was  the  game  of 
feeding  the  beautiful  iridescent  flame,  ruddy  and  green 
and  gold,  blue  and  pink  and  amber  and  silver,  with 
anything  they  could  pick  up,  anything  that  would  burn 
and  flicker.  Thick-strown  with  such  gleanings  the  oc 
casion  seemed  indeed,  in  spite  of  the  truth  that  they 
perhaps  wouldn't  have  proved,  under  cross-examina 
tion,  to  have  rubbed  shoulders  in  the  other  life  so  very 
hard.  Casual  contacts,  qualified  communities  enough, 
there  had  doubtless  been,  but  not  particular  "  pas 
sages,"  nothing  that  counted,  as  he  might  think  of  it, 
for  their  "very  own"  together,  for  nobody's  else  at  all. 
These  shades  of  historic  exactitude  didn't  signify;  the 
more  and  the  less  that  there  had  been  made  perfect 
terms — and  just  by  his  being  there  and  by  her  rejoic 
ing  in  it — with  their  present  need  to  have  had  all  their 
past  could  be  made  to  appear  to  have  given  them.  It 
was  to  this  tune  they  proceeded,  the  least  little  bit  as  if 
they  knowingly  pretended — he  giving  her  the  example 
and  setting  her  the  pace  of  it,  and  she,  poor  dear,  after 
a  first  inevitable  shyness,  an  uncertainty  of  wonder,  a 
breathlessness  of  courage,  falling  into  step  and  going 
whatever  length  he  would. 

She  showed  herself  ready  for  it,  grasping  gladly  at 
the  perception  of  what  he  must  mean;  and  if  she  didn't 
immediately  and  completely  fall  in — not  in  the  first 

218 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

half-hour,  not  even  in  the  three  or  four  others  that  his 
visit,  even  whenever  he  consulted  his  watch,  still  made 
nothing  of — she  yet  understood  enough  as  soon  as  she 
understood  that,  if  their  finer  economy  hadn't  so  beau 
tifully  served,  he  might  have  been  conveying  this,  that, 
and  the  other  incoherent  and  easy  thing  by  the  com 
paratively  clumsy  method  of  sound  and  statement. 
"No,  I  never  made  love  to  you;  it  would  in  fact  have 
been  absurd,  and  I  don't  care — though  I  almost  know, 
in  the  sense  of  almost  remembering! — who  did  and 
who  didn't;  but  you  were  always  about,  and  so  was  I, 
and,  little  as  you  may  yourself  care  who  /  did  it  to,  I 
dare  say  you  remember  (in  the  sense  of  having  known 
of  it!)  any  old  appearances  that  told.  But  we  can't 
afford  at  this  time  of  day  not  to  help  each  other  to  have 
had—well,  everything  there  was,  since  there's  no  more 
of  it  now,  nor  any  way  of  coming  by  it  except  so;  and 
therefore  let  us  make  together,  let  us  make  over  and 
recreate,  our  lost  world;  for  which  we  have  after  all 
and  at  the  worst  such  a  lot  of  material.  You  were  in 
particular  my  poor  dear  sisters'  friend — they  thought 
you  the  funniest  little  brown  thing  possible;  so  isn't 
that  again  to  the  good?  You  were  mine  only  to  the 
extent  that  you  were  so  much  in  and  out  of  the  house 
—as  how  much,  if  we  come  to  that,  wasn't  one  in  and 
out,  south  of  Thirtieth  Street  and  north  of  Washington 
Square,  in  those  days,  those  spacious,  sociable,  Arca 
dian  days,  that  we  flattered  ourselves  we  filled  with 
the  modern  fever,  but  that  were  so  different  from  any 

219 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

of  these  arrangements  of  pretended  hourly  Time  that 
dash  themselves  forever  to  pieces  as  from  the  fiftieth 
floors  of  sky-scrapers." 

This  was  the  kind  of  thing  that  was  in  the  air, 
whether  he  said  it  or  not,  and  that  could  hang  there 
even  with  such  quite  other  things  as  more  crudely 
came  out;  came  in  spite  of  its  being  perhaps  calculated 
to  strike  us  that  these  last  would  have  been  rather  and 
most  the  unspoken  and  the  indirect.  They  were  Cor 
nelia's  contribution,  and  as  soon  as  she  had  begun  to 
talk  of  Mrs.  Worthingham — he  didn't  begin  it! — they 
had  taken  their  place  bravely  in  the  centre  of  the  circle. 
There  they  made,  the  while,  their  considerable  little 
figure,  but  all  within  the  ring  formed  by  fifty  other 
allusions,  fitful  but  really  intenser  irruptions  that  hov 
ered  and  wavered  and  came  and  went,  joining  hands 
at  moments  and  whirling  round  as  in  chorus,  only 
then  again  to  dash  at  the  slightly  huddled  centre  with 
a  free  twitch  or  peck  or  push  or  other  taken  liberty, 
after  the  fashion  of  irregular  frolic  motions  in  a  coun 
try  dance  or  a  Christmas  game. 

"You're  so  in  love  with  her  and  want  to  marry  her!" 
— she  said  it  all  sympathetically  and  yearningly,  poor 
crapy  Cornelia;  as  if  it  were  to  be  quite  taken  for 
granted  that  she  knew  all  about  it.  And  then  when 
he  had  asked  how  she  knew — why  she  took  so  in 
formed  a  tone  about  it;  all  on  the  wonder  of  her  seem 
ing  so  much  more  "in"  it  just  at  that  hour  than  he 
himself  quite  felt  he  could  figure  for:  "Ah,  how  but 

220 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

from  the  dear  lovely  thing  herself?     Don't  you  sup 
pose  she  knows  it?" 

"  Oh,  she  absolutely  ' knows'  it,  does  she?" — he  fairly 
heard  himself  ask  that;  and  with  the  oddest  sense  at 
once  of  sharply  wanting  the  certitude  and  yet  of  see 
ing  the  question,  of  hearing  himself  say  the  words, 
through  several  thicknesses  of  some  wrong  medium. 
He  came  back  to  it  from  a  distance;  as  he  would  have 
had  to  come  back  (this  was  again  vivid  to  him)  should 
he  have  got  round  again  to  his  ripe  intention  three  days 
before — after  his  now  present  but  then  absent  friend, 
that  is,  had  left  him  planted  before  his  now  absent  but 
then  present  one  for  the  purpose.  "Do  you  mean  she 
— at  all  confidently! — expects?"  he  went  on,  not  much 
minding  if  it  couldn't  but  sound  foolish;  the  time  being 
given  it  for  him  meanwhile  by  the  sigh,  the  wondering 
gasp,  all  charged  with  the  unutterable,  that  the  tone  of 
his  appeal  set  in  motion.  He  saw  his  companion  look 
at  him,  but  it  might  have  been  with  the  eyes  of  thirty 
years  ago;  when — very  likely! — he  had  put  her  some 
such  question  about  some  girl  long  since  dead.  Dimly 
at  first,  then  more  distinctly,  didn't  it  surge  back  on 
him  for  the  very  strangeness  that  there  had  been  some 
such  passage  as  this  between  them — yes,  about  Mary 
Cardew! — in  the  autumn  of  '68? 

"  Why,  don't  you  realise  your  situation  ?  "  Miss  Rasch 
struck  him  as  quite  beautifully  wailing — above  all  to 
such  an  effect  of  deep  interest,  that  is,  on  her  own  part 
and  in  him. 

221 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"My  situation?" — he  echoed,  he  considered;  but 
reminded  afresh,  by  the  note  of  the  detached,  the  far- 
projected  in  it,  of  what  he  had  last  remembered  of  his 
sentient  state  on  his  once  taking  ether  at  the  dentist's. 

"Yours  and  hers — the  situation  of  her  adoring  you. 
I  suppose  you  at  least  know  it,"  Cornelia  smiled. 

Yes,  it  was  like  the  other  time  and  yet  it  wasn't. 
She  was  like — poor  Cornelia  was — everything  that  used 
to  be;  that  somehow  was  most  definite  to  him.  Still 
he  could  quite  reply  "Do  you  call  it — her  adoring  me 
—my  situation?" 

"Well,  it's  a  part  of  yours,  surely — if  you're  in  love 
with  her." 

"Am  I,  ridiculous  old  person!  in  love  with  her?" 
White-Mason  asked. 

"I  may  be  a  ridiculous  old  person,"  Cornelia  returned 
—"and,  for  that  matter,  of  course  I  am!  But  she's 
young  and  lovely  and  rich  and  clever:  so  what  could 
be  more  natural?" 

"Oh,  I  was  applying  that  opprobrious  epithet — !" 
He  didn't  finish,  though  he  meant  he  had  applied  it  to 
himself.  He  had  got  up  from  his  seat;  he  turned 
about  and,  taking  in,  as  his  eyes  also  roamed,  several 
objects  in  the  room,  serene  and  sturdy,  not  a  bit  cheap- 
looking,  little  old  New  York  objects  of  '68,  he  made, 
with  an  inner  art,  as  if  to  recognise  them — made  so, 
that  is,  for  himself;  had  quite  the  sense  for  the  moment 
of  asking  them,  of  imploring  them,  to  recognise  him, 
to  be  for  him  things  of  his  own  past.  Which  they  truly 

222 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

were,  he  could  have  the  next  instant  cried  out;  for  it 
meant  that  if  three  or  four  of  them,  small  sallow  carte- 
de-visite  photographs,  faithfully  framed  but  spectrally 
faded,  hadn't  in  every  particular,  frames  and  balloon 
skirts  and  false  "property"  balustrades  of  unimagin 
able  terraces  and  all,  the  tone  of  time,  the  secret  for 
warding  and  easing  off  the  perpetual  imminent  ache 
of  one's  protective  scowl,  one  would  verily  but  have  to 
let  the  scowl  stiffen,  or  to  take  up  seriously  the  ques 
tion  of  blue  goggles,  during  what  might  remain  of  life. 


WHAT  he  actually  took  up  from  a  little  old  Twelfth- 
Street  table  that  piously  preserved  the  plain  mahogany 
circle,  with  never  a  curl  nor  a  crook  nor  a  hint  of  a 
brazen  flourish,  what  he  paused  there  a  moment  for 
commerce  with,  his  back  presented  to  crapy  Cornelia, 
who  sat  taking  that  view  of  him,  during  this  opportu 
nity,  very  protrusively  and  frankly  and  fondly,  was  one 
of  the  wasted  mementos  just  mentioned,  over  which  he 
both  uttered  and  suppressed  a  small  comprehensive 
cry.  He  stood  there  another  minute  to  look  at  it,  and 
when  he  turned  about  still  kept  it  in  his  hand,  only 
holding  it  now  a  little  behind  him.  "You  must  have 
come  back  to  stay — with  all  your  beautiful  things. 
What  else  does  it  mean?" 

"  'Beautiful'?"  his  old  friend  commented  with  her 
brow  all  wrinkled  and  her  lips  thrust  out  in  expressive 

223 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

dispraise.  They  might  at  that  rate  have  been  scarce 
more  beautiful  than  she  herself.  "Oh,  don't  talk  so 
— after  Mrs.  Worthingham's!  They're  wonderful,  if 
you  will:  such  things,  such  things!  But  one's  own 
poor  relics  and  odds  and  ends  are  one's  own  at  least; 
and  one  has — yes — come  back  to  them.  They're  all  I 
have  in  the  world  to  come  back  to.  They  were  stored, 
and  what  I  was  paying — !"  Miss  Rasch  wofully  added. 

He  had  possession  of  the  small  old  picture;  he  hov 
ered  there;  he  put  his  eyes  again  to  it  intently;  then 
again  held  it  a  little  behind  him  as  if  it  might  have  been 
snatched  away  or  the  very  feel  of  it,  pressed  against 
him,  was  good  to  his  palm.  "Mrs.  Worthingham's 
things?  You  think  them  beautiful?" 

Cornelia  did  now,  if  ever,  show  an  odd  face.  "Why 
certainly  prodigious,  or  whatever.  Isn't  that  con 
ceded?" 

"No  doubt  every  horror,  at  the  pass  we've  come  to, 
is  conceded.  That's  just  what  I  complain  of." 

"Do  you  complain?" — she  drew  it  out  as  for  sur 
prise:  she  couldn't  have  imagined  such  a  thing. 

"To  me  her  things  are  awful.  They're  the  newest 
of  the  new." 

"Ah,  but  the  old  forms!" 

"Those  are  the  most  blatant.  I  mean  the  swagger 
ing  reproductions." 

"Oh  but,"  she  pleaded,  "we  can't  all  be  really  old." 

"No,  we  can't,  Cornelia.  But  you  can — !"  said 
White-Mason  with  the  frankest  appreciation. 

224 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

She  looked  up  at  him  from  where  she  sat  as  he 
could  imagine  her  looking  up  at  the  curate  at  Bognor. 
"Thank  you,  sir!  If  that's  all  you  want !" 

"It  «,"  he  said,  "all  I  want— or  almost." 

"Then  no  wonder  such  a  creature  as  that,"  she 
lightly  moralised,  "won't  suit  you!" 

He  bent  upon  her,  for  all  the  weight  of  his  question, 
his  smoothest  stare.  "You  hold  she  certainly  won't 
suit  me?" 

"Why,  what  can  I  tell  about  it?  Haven't  you  by 
this  time  found  out?" 

"No,  but  I  think  I'm  finding."  With  which  he 
began  again  to  explore. 

Miss  Rasch  immensely  wondered.  "You  mean  you 
don't  expect  to  come  to  an  understanding  with  her?" 
And  then  as  even  to  this  straight  challenge  he  made  at 
first  no  answer:  "Do  you  mean  you  give  it  up?" 

He  waited  some  instants  more,  but  not  meeting  her 
eyes — only  looking  again  about  the  room.  "What  do 
you  think  of  my  chance?" 

"Oh,"  his  companion  cried,  "what  has  what  I 
think  to  do  with  it?  How  can  I  think  anything  but 
that  she  must  like  you?" 

"Yes — of  course.     But  how  much?" 

"Then  don't  you  really  know?"  Cornelia  asked. 

He  kept  up  his  walk,  oddly  preoccupied  and  still  not 
looking  at  her.  "Do  you,  my  dear?" 

She  waited  a  little.  "If  you  haven't  really  put  it  to 
her  I  don't  suppose  she  knows." 

225 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

This  at  last  arrested  him  again.  "My  dear  Cor 
nelia,  she  doesn't  know !" 

He  had  paused  as  for  the  desperate  tone,  or  at  least 
the  large  emphasis  of  it,  so  that  she  took  him  up. 
"The  more  reason  then  to  help  her  to  find  it  out." 

"I  mean,"  he  explained,  "that  she  doesn't  know 
anything." 

"Anything?" 

"Anything  else,  I  mean — even  if  she  does  know 
that." 

Cornelia  considered  of  it.  "But  what  else  need 
she — in  particular — know?  Isn't  that  the  principal 
thing?" 

"Well" — and  he  resumed  his  circuit — "she  doesn't 
know  anything  that  we  know.  But  nothing,"  he  re- 
emphasised — "nothing  whatever!" 

"Well,  can't  she  do  without  that?" 

"Evidently  she  can — and  evidently  she  does,  beau 
tifully.  But  the  question  is  whether  /  can!" 

He  had  paused  once  more  with  his  point — but  she 
glared,  poor  Cornelia,  with  her  wonder.  "Surely  if 
you  know  for  yourself !" 

"Ah,  it  doesn't  seem  enough  for  me  to  know  for 
myself!  One  wants  a  woman,"  he  argued — but  still, 
in  his  prolonged  tour,  quite  without  his  scowl — "to 
know  jor  one,  to  know  with  one.  That's  what  you  do 
now,"  he  candidly  put  to  her. 

It  made  her  again  gape.  "Do  you  mean  you  want 
to  marry  me?" 

226 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

He  was  so  full  of  what  he  did  mean,  however,  that 
he  failed  even  to  notice  it.  "She  doesn't  in  the  least 
know,  for  instance,  how  old  I  am." 

"That's  because  you're  so  young!" 

"Ah,  there  you  are!" — and  he  turned  off  afresh  and 
as  if  almost  in  disgust.  It  left  her  visibly  perplexed — 
though  even  the  perplexed  Cornelia  was  still  the  ex 
ceedingly  pointed;  but  he  had  come  to  her  aid  after 
another  turn.  "Remember,  please,  that  I'm  pretty 
well  as  old  as  you." 

She  had  all  her  point  at  least,  while  she  bridled  and 
blinked,  for  this.  "You're  exactly  a  year  and  ten 
months  older." 

It  checked  him  there  for  delight.  "You  remember 
my  birthday?" 

She  twinkled  indeed  like  some  far-off  light  of  home. 
"I  remember  every  one's.  It's  a  little  way  I've  always 
had — and  that  I've  never  lost." 

He  looked  at  her  accomplishment,  across  the  room, 
as  at  some  striking,  some  charming  phenomenon. 
"Well,  that's  the  sort  of  thing  I  want!"  All  the  ripe 
candour  of  his  eyes  confirmed  it. 

What  could  she  do  therefore,  she  seemed  to  ask  him, 
but  repeat  her  question  of  a  moment  before? — which 
indeed  presently  she  made  up  her  mind  to.  "Do  you 
want  to  marry  me?" 

It  had  this  time  better  success — if  the  term  may 
be  felt  in  any  degree  to  apply.  All  his  candour,  or 
more  of  it  at  least,  was  in  his  slow,  mild,  kind,  con- 

227 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

sidering  head-shake.  "No,  Cornelia — not  to  marry 
you." 

His  discrimination  was  a  wonder;  but  since  she  was 
clearly  treating  him  now  as  if  everything  about  him 
was,  so  she  could  as  exquisitely  meet  it.  "Not  at 
least,"  she  convulsively  smiled,  "until  you've  honour 
ably  tried  Mrs.  Worthingham.  Don't  you  really  mean 
to?"  she  gallantly  insisted. 

He  waited  again  a  little;  then  he  brought  out:  "I'll 
tell  you  presently."  He  came  back,  and  as  by  still 
another  mere  glance  over  the  room,  to  what  seemed  to 
him  so  much  nearer.  "That  table  was  old  Twelfth- 
Street?" 

"Everything  here  was." 

"Oh,  the  pure  blessings!  With  you,  ah,  with  you, 
I  haven't  to  wear  a  green  shade."  And  he  had  re 
tained  meanwhile  his  small  photograph,  which  he 
again  showed  himself.  "Didn't  we  talk  of  Mary 
Cardew?" 

"Why,  do  you  remember  it?"  She  marvelled  to 
extravagance. 

"You  make  me.  You  connect  me  with  it.  You 
connect  it  with  me."  He  liked  to  display  to  her  this 
excellent  use  she  thus  had,  the  service  she  rendered. 
"There  are  so  many  connections — there  will  be  so 
many.  I  feel  how,  with  you,  they  must  all  come  up 
again  for  me:  in  fact  you're  bringing  them  out  already, 
just  while  I  look  at  you,  as  fast  as  ever  you  can.  The 
fact  that  you  knew  every  one — !"  he  went  on;  yet  as 

228 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

if  there  were  more  in  that  too  than  he  could  quite 
trust  himself  about. 

"Yes,  I  knew  every  one/'  said  Cornelia  Rasch;  but 
this  time  with  perfect  simplicity.  "I  knew,  I  imagine, 
more  than  you  do — or  more  than  you  did." 

It  kept  him  there,  it  made  him  wonder  with  his  eyes 
on  her.  "Things  about  them — our  people?" 

"Our  people.     Ours  only  now." 

Ah,  such  an  interest  as  he  felt  in  this — taking  from 
her  while,  so  far  from  scowling,  he  almost  gaped,  all 
it  might  mean!  "Ours  indeed — and  it's  awfully  good 
they  are;  or  that  we're  still  here  for  them!  Nobody 
else  is — nobody  but  you:  not  a  cat!" 

"Well,  I  am  a  cat!"  Cornelia  grinned. 

"Do  you  mean  you  can  tell  me  things — ?"  It  was 
too  beautiful  to  believe. 

"About  what  really  was?"  she  artfully  considered, 
holding  him  immensely  now.  "Well,  unless  they've 
come  to  you  with  time;  unless  you've  learned — or 
found  out." 

"Oh,"  he  reassuringly  cried — reassuringly,  it  most 
seemed,  for  himself — "nothing  has  come  to  me  with 
time,  everything  has  gone  from  me.  How  can  I  find 
out  now!  What  creature  has  an  idea ?" 

She  threw  up  her  hands  with  the  shrug  of  old  days 
— the  sharp  little  shrug  his  sisters  used  to  imitate  and 
that  she  hadn't  had  to  go  to  Europe  for.  The  only 
thing  was  that  he  blessed  her  for  bringing  it  back. 

"Ah,  the  ideas  of  people  now !" 

229 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"Yes,  their  ideas  are  certainly  not  about  us."  But 
he  ruefully  faced  it.  "We've  none  the  less,  however, 
to  live  with  them." 

"With  their  ideas — ?"  Cornelia  questioned. 

"With  them — these  modern  wonders;  such  as  they 
are!"  Then  he  went  on:  "It  must  have  been  to  help 
me  you've  come  back." 

She  said  nothing  for  an  instant  about  that,  only 
nodding  instead  at  his  photograph.  "What  has  be 
come  of  yours?  I  mean  of  her" 

This  time  it  made  him  turn  pale.  "You  remember 
I  have  one?" 

She  kept  her  eyes  on  him.  "In  a  ' pork-pie'  hat, 
with  her  hair  in  a  long  net.  That  was  so  ' smart' 
then;  especially  with  one's  skirt  looped  up,  over  one's 
hooped  magenta  petticoat,  in  little  festoons,  and  a  row 
of  very  big  onyx  beads  over  one's  braided  velveteen 
sack — braided  quite  plain  and  very  broad,  don't  you 
know?" 

He  smiled  for  her  extraordinary  possession  of  these 
things — she  was  as  prompt  as  if  she  had  had  them  be 
fore  her.  "Oh,  rather — 'don't  I  know?'  You  wore 
brown  velveteen,  and,  on  those  remarkably  small  hands, 
funny  gauntlets — like  mine." 

"Oh,  do  you  remember?  But  like  yours?"  she 
wondered. 

"I  mean  like  hers  in  my  photograph."  But  he 
came  back  to  the  present  picture.  "This  is  better, 
however,  for  really  showing  her  lovely  head." 

230 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

" Mary's  head  was  a  perfection!"  Cornelia  testified. 

"Yes — it  was  better  than  her  heart." 

"Ah,  don't  say  that!"  she  pleaded.  "You  weren't 
fair." 

"Don't  you  think  I  was  fair?"  It  interested  him 
immensely — and  the  more  that  he  indeed  mightn't  have 
been;  which  he  seemed  somehow  almost  to  hope. 

"She  didn't  think  so— to  the  very  end." 

"She  didn't?"— ah  the  right  things  Cornelia  said  to 
him!  But  before  she  could  answer  he  was  studying 
again  closely  the  small  faded  face.  "No,  she  doesn't, 
she  doesn't.  Oh,  her  charming  sad  eyes  and  the  way 
they  say  that,  across  the  years,  straight  into  mine! 
But  I  don't  know,  I  don't  know!"  White-Mason  quite 
comfortably  sighed. 

His  companion  appeared  to  appreciate  this  effect. 
"That's  just  the  way  you  used  to  flirt  with  her,  poor 
thing.  Wouldn't  you  like  to  have  it?"  she  asked. 

"  This — for  my  very  own  ?  "  He  looked  up  delighted. 
"I  really  may?" 

"Well,  if  you'll  give  me  yours.     We'll  exchange." 

"That's  a  charming  idea.  We'll  exchange.  But 
you  must  come  and  get  it  at  my  rooms — where  you'll 
see  my  things." 

For  a  little  she  made  no  answer — as  if  for  some 
feeling.  Then  she  said:  "You  asked  me  just  now 
why  I've  come  back." 

He  stared  as  for  the  connection;  after  which  with  a 

smile:  "Not  to  do  that ?" 

231 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

She  waited  briefly  again,  but  with  a  queer  little  look. 
"I  can  do  those  things  now;  and — yes! — that's  in  a 
manner  why.  I  came,"  she  then  said,  "because  I 
knew  of  a  sudden  one  day — knew  as  never  before — 
that  I  was  old." 

"I  see.  I  see."  He  quite  understood — she  had 
notes  that  so  struck  him.  "And  how  did  you  like  it?" 

She  hesitated— she  decided.  "Well,  if  I  liked  it, 
it  was  on  the  principle  perhaps  on  which  some  people 
like  high  game!" 

"High  game— that's  good!"  he  laughed.  "Ah,  my 
dear,  we're  'high'!" 

She  shook  her  head.  "No,  not  you — yet.  I  at  any 
rate  didn't  want  any  more  adventures,"  Cornelia  said, 

He  showed  their  small  relic  again  with  assurance. 
"You  wanted  us.  Then  here  we  are'  Oh  how  we  can 
talk! — with  all  those  things  you  know!  You  are  an 
invention.  And  you'll  see  there  are  things  /  know.  I 
shall  turn  up  here — well,  daily." 

She  took  it  in,  but  only  after  a  moment  answered. 
"There  was  something  you  said  just  now  you'd  tell 
me.  Don't  you  mean  to  try ?" 

"Mrs.  Worthingham ? "  He  drew  from  within  his 
coat  his  pocket-book  and  carefully  found  a  place  in  it 
for  Mary  Cardew's  carte-de-visite,  folding  it  together 
with  deliberation  over  which  he  put  it  back.  Finally  he 
spoke.  "No— I've  decided.  I  can't— I  don't  want  to." 

Cornelia  marvelled — or  looked  as  if  she  did.  "Not 
for  all  she  has?" 

232 


CRAPY  CORNELIA 

"Yes — I  know  all  she  has.  But  I  also  know  all  she 
hasn't.  And,  as  I  told  you,  she  herself  doesn't — hasn't 
a  glimmer  of  a  suspicion  of  it;  and  never  will  have." 

Cornelia  magnanimously  thought.  "No — but  she 
knows  other  things." 

He  shook  his  head  as  at  the  portentous  heap  of  them. 
"Too  many — too  many.  And  other  indeed — so  other! 
Do  you  know,"  he  went  on,  "that  it's  as  if  you — by 
turning  up  for  me — had  brought  that  home  to  me?" 

"  'For  you,'  "  she  candidly  considered.  "But  what 
— since  you  can't  marry  me! — can  you  do  with  me?" 

Well,  he  seemed  to  have  it  all.  "Everything.  I 
can  live  with  you — just  this  way."  To  illustrate  which 
he  dropped  into  the  other  chair  by  her  fire;  where,  lean 
ing  back,  he  gazed  at  the  flame.  "I  can't  give  you 
up.  It's  very  curious.  It  has  come  over  me  as  it  did 
over  you  when  you  renounced  Bognor.  That's  it — I 
know  it  at  last,  and  I  see  one  can  like  it.  I'm  'high.' 
You  needn't  deny  it.  That's  my  taste.  I'm  old." 
And  in  spite  of  the  considerable  glow  there  of  her  little 
household  altar  he  said  it  without  the  scowl. 


233 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 
I 

SHE  had  practically,  he  believed,  conveyed  the  inti 
mation,  the  horrid,  brutal,  vulgar  menace,  in  the 
course  of  their  last  dreadful  conversation,  when,  for 
whatever  was  left  him  of  pluck  or  confidence — confi 
dence  in  what  he  would  fain  have  called  a  little  more 
aggressively  the  strength  of  his  position — he  had  judged 
best  not  to  take  it  up.  But  this  time  there  was  no 
question  of  not  understanding,  or  of  pretending  he 
didn't;  the  ugly,  the  awful  words,  ruthlessly  formed  by 
her  lips,  were  like  the  fingers  of  a  hand  that  she  might 
have  thrust  into  her  pocket  for  extraction  of  the  mon 
strous  object  that  would  serve  best  for — what  should 
he  call  it  ? — a  gage  of  battle. 

"If  I  haven't  a  very  different  answer  from  you  within 
the  next  three  days  I  shall  put  the  matter  into  the 
hands  of  my  solicitor,  whom  it  may  interest  you  to 
know  I've  already  seen.  I  shall  bring  an  action  for 
'breach'  against  you,  Herbert  Dodd,  as  sure  as  my 
name's  Kate  Cookham." 

There  it  was,  straight  and  strong — yet  he  felt  he 
could  say  for  himself,  when  once  it  had  come,  or  even, 
already,  just  as  it  was  coming,  that  it  turned  on,  as  if 

237 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

she  had  moved  an  electric  switch,  the  very  brightest 
light  of  his  own  very  reasons.  There  she  was,  in  all 
the  grossness  of  her  native  indelicacy,  in  all  her  essen 
tial  excess  of  will  and  destitution  of  scruple;  and  it  was 
the  woman  capable  of  that  ignoble  threat  who,  his 
sharper  sense  of  her  quality  having  become  so  quite 
deterrent,  was  now  making  for  him  a  crime  of  it  that 
he  shouldn't  wish  to  tie  himself  to  her  for  life.  The 
vivid,  lurid  thing  was  the  reality,  all  unmistakable,  of 
her  purpose;  she  had  thought  her  case  well  out;  had 
measured  its  odious,  specious  presentability;  had  taken, 
he  might  be  sure,  the  very  best  advice  obtainable  at 
Properley,  where  there  was  always  a  first-rate  prompti 
tude  of  everything  fourth-rate;  it  was  disgustingly  cer 
tain,  in  short,  that  she'd  proceed.  She  was  sharp  and 
adroit,  moreover — distinctly  in  certain  ways  a  master- 
hand;  how  otherwise,  with  her  so  limited  mere  attrac 
tiveness,  should  she  have  entangled  him?  He  couldn't 
shut  his  eyes  to  the  very  probable  truth  that  if  she 
should  try  it  she'd  pull  it  off.  She  knew  she  would — 
precisely;  and  her  assurance  was  thus  the  very  proof  of 
her  cruelty.  That  she  had  pretended  she  loved  him 
was  comparatively  nothing;  other  women  had  pre 
tended  it,  and  other  women  too  had  really  done  it; 
but  that  she  had  pretended  he  could  possibly  have 
been  right  and  safe  and  blest  in  loving  her,  a  creature 
of  the  kind  who  could  sniff  that  squalor  of  the  law- 
court,  of  claimed  damages  and  brazen  lies  and  pub 
lished  kisses,  of  love-letters  read  amid  obscene  guffaws, 

238 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

as  a  positive  tonic  to  resentment,  as  a  high  incentive  to 
her  course — this  was  what  put  him  so  beautifully  in 
the  right.  It  was  what  might  signify  in  a  woman  all 
through,  he  said  to  himself,  the  mere  imagination  of 
such  machinery.  Truly  what  a  devilish  conception 
and  what  an  appalling  nature! 

But  there  was  no  doubt,  luckily,  either,  that  he  could 
plant  his  feet  the  firmer  for  his  now  intensified  sense  of 
these  things.  He  was  to  live,  it  appeared,  abominably 
worried,  he  was  to  live  consciously  rueful,  he  was  to  live 
perhaps  even  what  a  scoffing  world  would  call  abjectly 
exposed;  but  at  least  he  was  to  live  saved.  In  spite  of 
his  clutch  of  which  steadying  truth,  however,  and  in 
spite  of  his  declaring  to  her,  with  many  other  angry 
protests  and  pleas,  that  the  line  of  conduct  she  an 
nounced  was  worthy  of  a  vindictive  barmaid,  a  lurk 
ing  fear  in  him,  too  deep  to  counsel  mere  defiance, 
made  him  appear  to  keep  open  a  little,  till  he  could 
somehow  turn  round  again,  the  door  of  possible  com 
position.  He  had  scoffed  at  her  claim,  at  her  threat, 
at  her  thinking  she  could  hustle  and  bully  him — "Such 
a  way,  my  eye,  to  call  back  to  life  a  dead  love!" — yet 
his  instinct  was  ever,  prudentially  but  helplessly,  for 
gaining  time,  even  if  time  only  more  wofully  to  quake, 
and  he  gained  it  now  by  not  absolutely  giving  for  his 
ultimatum  that  he  wouldn't  think  of  coming  round. 
He  didn't  in  the  smallest  degree  mean  to  come  round, 
but  it  was  characteristic  of  him  that  he  could  for  three 
or  four  days  breathe  a  little  easier  by  having  left  her 

239 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

under  the  impression  that  he  perhaps  might.  At  the 
same  time  he  couldn't  not  have  said — what  had  con 
duced  to  bring  out,  in  retort,  her  own  last  word,  the  word 
on  which  they  had  parted — "Do  you  mean  to  say  you 
yourself  would  now  be  willing  to  marry  and  live  with 
a  man  of  whom  you  could  feel,  the  thing  done,  that 
he'd  be  all  the  while  thinking  of  you  in  the  light  of  a 
hideous  coercion?"  "Never  you  mind  about  my  will 
ingness,"  Kate  had  answered;  "you've  known  what 
that  has  been  for  the  last  six  months.  Leave  that  to 
me,  my  willingness — I'll  take  care  of  it  all  right;  and 
just  see  what  conclusion  you  can  come  to  about  your 
own." 

He  was  to  remember  afterward  how  he  had  won 
dered  whether,  turned  upon  her  in  silence  while  her 
odious  lucidity  reigned  unchecked,  his  face  had  shown 
her  anything  like  the  quantity  of  hate  he  felt.  Prob 
ably  not  at  all;  no  man's  face  could  express  that  im 
mense  amount;  especially  the  fair,  refined,  intellectual, 
gentlemanlike  face  which  had  had — and  by  her  own 
more  than  once  repeated  avowal — so  much  to  do  with 
the  enormous  fancy  she  had  originally  taken  to  him. 
"Which — frankly  now — would  you  personally  rather  I 
should  do,"  he  had  at  any  rate  asked  her  with  an  in 
tention  of  supreme  irony:  "just  sordidly  marry  you  on 
top  of  this,  or  leave  you  the  pleasure  of  your  lovely 
appearance  in  court  and  of  your  so  assured  (since 
that's  how  you  feel  it)  big  haul  of  damages?  Sha'n't 
you  be  awfully  disappointed,  in  fact,  if  I  don't  let  you 

240 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

get  something  better  out  of  me  than  a  poor  plain  ten- 
shilling  gold  ring  and  the  rest  of  the  blasphemous  rub 
bish,  as  we  should  make  it  between  us,  pronounced  at 
the  altar?  I  take  it  of  course,"  he  had  swaggered  on, 
"that  your  pretension  wouldn't  be  for  a  moment  that 
I  should — after  the  act  of  profanity — take  up  my  life 
with  you." 

"It's  just  as  much  my  dream  as  it  ever  was,  Herbert 
Dodd,  to  take  up  mine  with  you!  Remember  for  me 
that  I  can  do  with  it,  my  dear,  that  my  idea  is  for  even 
as  much  as  that  of  you!"  she  had  cried;  "remember 
that  for  me,  Herbert  Dodd;  remember,  remember!" 

It  was  on  this  she  had  left  him — left  him  frankly 
under  a  mortal  chill.  There  might  have  been  the  last 
ring  of  an  appeal  or  a  show  of  persistent  and  perverse 
tenderness  in  it,  however  preposterous  any  such  mat 
ter;  but  in  point  of  fact  her  large,  clean,  plain,  brown 
face — so  much  too  big  for  her  head,  he  now  more  than 
ever  felt  it  to  be,  just  as  her  head  was  so  much  too  big 
for  her  body,  and  just  as  her  hats  had  an  irritating  way 
of  appearing  to  decline  choice  and  conformity  in  re 
spect  to  any  of  her  dimensions — presented  itself  with 
about  as  much  expression  as  his  own  shop-window 
when  the  broad,  blank,  sallow  blind  was  down.  He 
was  fond  of  his  shop- window  with  some  good  show  on; 
he  had  a  fancy  for  a  good  show  and  was  master  of 
twenty  different  schemes  of  taking  arrangement  for  the 
old  books  and  prints,  "high-class  rarities"  his  modest 
catalogue  called  them,  in  which  he  dealt  and  which 

241 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

his  maternal  uncle,  David  Geddes,  had,  as  he  liked  to 
say,  "handed  down"  to  him.  His  widowed  mother 
had  screwed  the  whole  thing,  the  stock  and  the  connec 
tion  and  the  rather  bad  little  house  in  the  rather  bad 
little  street,  out  of  the  ancient  worthy,  shortly  before 
his  death,  in  the  name  of  the  youngest  and  most  inter 
esting,  the  "delicate"  one  and  the  literary,  of  her  five 
scattered  and  struggling  children.  He  could  enjoy  his 
happiest  collocations  and  contrasts  and  effects,  his 
harmonies  and  varieties  of  toned  and  faded  leather 
and  cloth,  his  sought  color-notes  and  the  high  clear 
nesses,  here  and  there,  of  his  white  and  beautifully 
figured  price-labels,  which  pleased  him  enough  in 
themselves  almost  to  console  him  for  not  oftener  having 
to  break,  on  a  customer's  insistence,  into  the  balanced 
composition.  But  the  dropped  expanse  of  time-soiled 
canvas,  the  thing  of  Sundays  and  holidays,  with  just 
his  name,  "Herbert  Dodd,  Successor,"  painted  on  be 
low  his  uncle's  antique  style,  the  feeble  penlike  flour 
ishes  already  quite  archaic — this  ugly  vacant  mask, 
which  might  so  easily  be  taken  for  the  mask  of  failure, 
somehow  always  gave  him  a  chill. 

That  had  been  just  the  sort  of  chill — the  analogy 
was  complete — of  Kate  Cookham's  last  look.  He  sup 
posed  people  doing  an  awfully  good  and  sure  and 
steady  business,  in  whatever  line,  could  see  a  whole 
front  turned  to  vacancy  that  way  and  merely  think  of 
the  hours  off  represented  by  it.  Only  for  this — ner 
vously  to  bear  it,  in  other  words,  and  Herbert  Dodd, 

242 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

quite  with  the  literary  temperament  himself,  was  capa 
ble  of  that  amount  of  play  of  fancy,  or  even  of  morbid 
analysis — you  had  to  be  on  some  footing,  you  had  to 
feel  some  confidence,  pretty  different  from  his  own  up 
to  now.  He  had  never  not  enjoyed  passing  his  show 
on  the  other  side  of  the  street  and  taking  it  in  thence 
with  a  casual  obliquity;  but  he  had  never  held  optical 
commerce  with  the  drawn  blind  for  a  moment  longer 
than  he  could  help.  It  always  looked  horribly  final 
and  as  if  it  never  would  come  up  again.  Big  and 
bare,  with  his  name  staring  at  him  from  the  middle, 
it  thus  offered  in  its  grimness  a  turn  of  comparison 
for  Miss  Cookham's  ominous  visage.  She  never  wore 
pretty,  dotty,  transparent  veils,  as  Nan  Drury  did, 
and  the  words  "  Herbert  Dodd" — save  that  she  had 
sounded  them  at  him  there  two  or  three  times  more 
like  a  Meg  Merrilies  or  the  bold  bad  woman  in  one  of 
the  melodramas  of  high  life  given  during  the  fine  sea 
son  in  the  pavilion  at  the  end  of  Properley  Pier — were 
dreadfully,  were  permanently,  seated  on  her  lips.  She 
was  grim,  no  mistake. 

That  evening,  alone  in  the  back  room  above  the 
shop,  he  saw  so  little  what  he  could  do  that,  consciously 
demoralised  for  the  hour,  he  gave  way  to  tears  about  it. 
Her  taking  a  stand  so  incredibly  "low,"  that  was  what 
he  couldn't  get  over.  The  particular  bitterness  of  his 
cup  was  his  having  let  himself  in  for  a  struggle  on  such 
terms — the  use,  on  her  side,  of  the  vulgarest  process 
known  to  the  law:  the  vulgarest,  the  vulgarest,  he  kept 

243 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

repeating  that,  clinging  to  the  help  rendered  him  by 
this  imputation  to  his  terrorist  of  the  vice  he  sincerely 
believed  he  had  ever,  among  difficulties  (for  oh  he 
recognised  the  difficulties!)  sought  to  keep  most  alien 
to  him.  He  knew  what  he  was,  in  a  dismal,  down-trod 
den  sphere  enough — the  lean  young  proprietor  of  an  old 
business  that  had  itself  rather  shrivelled  with  age  than 
ever  grown  fat,  the  purchase  and  sale  of  second-hand 
books  and  prints,  with  the  back  street  of  a  long-fronted 
south-coast  watering-place  (Old  Town  by  good  luck) 
for  the  dusky  field  of  his  life.  But  he  had  gone  in  for 
all  the  education  he  could  get — his  educated  customers 
would  often  hang  about  for  more  talk  by  the  half-hour 
at  a  time,  he  actually  feeling  himself,  and  almost  with 
a  scruple,  hold  them  there;  which  meant  that  he  had 
had  (he  couldn't  be  blind  to  that)  natural  taste  and  had 
lovingly  cultivated  and  formed  it.  Thus,  from  as  far 
back  as  he  could  remember,  there  had  been  things  all 
round  him  that  he  suffered  from  when  other  people 
didn't;  and  he  had  kept  most  of  his  suffering  to  him 
self — which  had  taught  him,  in  a  manner,  how  to  suf 
fer,  and  how  almost  to  like  to. 

So,  at  any  rate,  he  had  never  let  go  his  sense  of  cer 
tain  differences,  he  had  done  everything  he  could  to 
keep  it  up — whereby  everything  that  was  vulgar  was 
on  the  wrong  side  of  his  line.  He  had  believed,  for  a 
series  of  strange,  oppressed  months,  that  Kate  Cook- 
ham's  manners  and  tone  were  on  the  right  side;  she 
had  been  governess — for  young  children — in  two  very 

244 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

good  private  families,  and  now  had  classes  in  literature 
and  history  for  bigger  girls  who  were  sometimes  brought 
by  their  mammas;  in  fact,  coming  in  one  day  to  look 
over  his  collection  of  students'  manuals,  and  drawing 
it  out,  as  so  many  did,  for  the  evident  sake  of  his  con 
versation,  she  had  appealed  to  him  that  very  first  time 
by  her  apparently  pronounced  intellectual  side — good 
ness  knew  she  didn't  even  then  by  the  physical! — which 
she  had  artfully  kept  in  view  till  she  had  entangled 
him  past  undoing.  And  it  had  all  been  but  the  cheap 
est  of  traps — when  he  came  to  take  the  pieces  apart  a 
bit — laid  over  a  brazen  avidity.  What  he  now  col 
lapsed  for,  none  the  less — what  he  sank  down  on  a 
chair  at  a  table  and  nursed  his  weak,  scared  sobs  in 
his  resting  arms  for — was  the  fact  that,  whatever  the 
trap,  it  held  him  as  with  the  grip  of  sharp  murderous 
steel.  There  he  was,  there  he  was;  alone  in  the  brown 
summer  dusk — brown  through  his  windows — he  cried 
and  he  cried.  He  shouldn't  get  out  without  losing  a 
limb.  The  only  question  was  which  of  his  limbs  it 
should  be. 

Before  he  went  out,  later  on — for  he  at  last  felt  the 
need  to — he  could,  however,  but  seek  to  remove  from 
his  face  and  his  betraying  eyes,  over  his  washing-stand, 
the  traces  of  his  want  of  fortitude.  He  brushed  him 
self  up;  with  which,  catching  his  stricken  image  a  bit 
spectrally  in  an  old  dim  toilet-glass,  he  knew  again,  in 
a  flash,  the  glow  of  righteous  resentment.  Who  should 
be  assured  against  coarse  usage  if  a  man  of  his  really 

245 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

elegant,  perhaps  in  fact  a  trifle  over-refined  or  "effete" 
appearance,  his  absolutely  gentlemanlike  type,  couldn't 
be?  He  never  went  so  far  as  to  rate  himself,  with 
exaggeration,  a  gentleman;  but  he  would  have  main 
tained  against  all  comers,  with  perfect  candour  and  as 
claiming  a  high  advantage,  that  he  was,  in  spite  of  that 
liability  to  blubber,  "like"  one;  which  he  was  no  doubt, 
for  that  matter,  at  several  points.  Like  what  lady 
then,  who  could  ever  possibly  have  been  taken  for  one, 
was  Kate  Cookham,  and  therefore  how  could  one  have 
anything — anything  of  the  intimate  and  private  order 
—out  with  her  fairly  and  on  the  plane,  the  only  possible 
one,  of  common  equality  ?  He  might  find  himself  crip 
pled  for  life;  he  believed  verily,  the  more  he  thought, 
that  that  was  what  was  before  him.  But  be  ended  by 
seeing  this  doom  in  the  almost  redeeming  light  of  the 
fact  that  it  would  all  have  been  because  he  was,  com 
paratively,  too  aristocratic.  Yes,  a  man  in  his  station 
couldn't  afford  to  carry  that  so  far — it  must  sooner  or 
later,  in  one  way  or  another,  spell  ruin.  Never  mind 
—it  was  the  only  thing  he  could  be.  Of  course  he 
should  exquisitely  suffer — but  when  hadn't  he  exqui 
sitely  suffered?  How  was  he  going  to  get  through  life 
by  any  arrangement  without  that?  No  wonder  such 
a  woman  as  Kate  Cookham  had  been  keen  to  annex 
so  rare  a  value.  The  right  thing  would  have  been  that 
the  highest  price  should  be  paid  for  it — by  such  a 
different  sort  of  logic  from  this  nightmare  of  his  having 
to  pay. 

246 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 


II 


WHICH  was  the  way,  of  course,  he  talked  to  Nan 
Drury — as  he  had  felt  the  immediate  wild  need  to  do; 
for  he  should  perhaps  be  able  to  bear  it  all  somehow 
or  other  with  her — while  they  sat  together,  when  time 
and  freedom  served,  on  one  of  the  very  last,  the  far 
westward,  benches  of  the  interminable  sea-front.  It 
wasn't  every  one  who  walked  so  far,  especially  at  that 
flat  season — the  only  ghost  of  a  bustle  now,  save  for 
the  gregarious,  the  obstreperous  haunters  of  the  flut 
tering,  far-shining  Pier,  being  reserved  for  the  sunny 
Parade  of  midwinter.  It  wasn't  every  one  who  cared 
for  the  sunsets  (which  you  got  awfully  well  from  there 
and  which  were  a  particular  strong  point  of  the  lower, 
the  more  "  sympathetic, "  as  Herbert  Dodd  liked  to  call 
it,  Properley  horizon)  as  he  had  always  intensely  cared, 
and  as  he  had  found  Nan  Drury  care;  to  say  nothing 
of  his  having  also  observed  how  little  they  directly 
spoke  to  Miss  Cookham.  He  had  taught  this  oppres 
sive  companion  to  notice  them  a  bit,  as  he  had  taught 
her  plenty  of  other  things,  but  that  was  a  different 
matter;  for  the  reason  that  the  "land's  end"  (stretch 
ing  a  point  it  carried  off  that  name)  had  been,  and  had 
had  to  be,  by  their  lack  of  more  sequestered  resorts 
and  conveniences,  the  scene  of  so  much  of  what  she 
styled  their  wooing-time — or,  to  put  it  more  properly, 
of  the  time  during  which  she  had  made  the  straightest 

247 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

and  most  unabashed  love  to  him:  just  as  it  could 
henceforth  but  render  possible,  under  an  equal  rigour, 
that  he  should  enjoy  there  periods  of  consolation  from 
beautiful,  gentle,  tender-souled  Nan,  to  whom  he  was 
now  at  last,  after  the  wonderful  way  they  had  helped 
each  other  to  behave,  going  to  make  love,  absolutely 
unreserved  and  abandoned,  absolutely  reckless  and 
romantic  love,  a  refuge  from  poisonous  reality,  as  hard 
as  ever  he  might. 

The  league-long,  paved,  lighted,  garden-plotted, 
seated  and  refuged  Marina  renounced  its  more  or  less 
celebrated  attractions  to  break  off  short  here;  and  an 
inward  curve  of  the  kindly  westward  shore  almost 
made  a  wide-armed  bay,  with  all  the  ugliness  between 
town  and  country,  and  the  further  casual  fringe  of  the 
coast,  turning,  as  the  day  waned,  to  rich  afternoon 
blooms  of  grey  and  brown  and  distant — it  might  fairly 
have  been  beautiful  Hampshire — blue.  Here  it  was 
that,  all  that  blighted  summer,  with  Nan — from  the 
dreadful  May-day  on — he  gave  himself  up  to  the  re 
action  of  intimacy  with  the  kind  of  woman,  at  least, 
that  he  liked;  even  if  of  everything  else  that  might 
make  life  possible  he  was  to  be,  by  what  he  could  make 
out,  forever  starved.  Here  it  was  that — as  well  as  on 
whatever  other  scraps  of  occasions  they  could  manage 
—Nan  began  to  take  off  and  fold  up  and  put  away  in 
her  pocket  her  pretty,  dotty,  becoming  veil;  as  under 
the  logic  of  his  having  so  tremendously  ceased,  in  the 
shake  of  his  dark  storm-gust,  to  be  engaged  to  another 

248 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

woman.  Her  removal  of  that  obstacle  to  a  trusted 
friend's  assuring  himself  whether  the  peachlike  bloom 
of  her  finer  facial  curves  bore  the  test  of  such  further 
inquiry  into  their  cool  sweetness  as  might  reinforce  a 
mere  baffled  gaze — her  momentous,  complete  surren 
der  of  so  much  of  her  charm,  let  us  say,  both  marked 
the  change  in  the  situation  of  the  pair  and  established 
the  record  of  their  perfect  observance  of  every  pro 
priety  for  so  long  before.  They  afterward  in  fact 
could  have  dated  it,  their  full  clutch  of  their  freedom 
and  the  bliss  of  their  having  so  little  henceforth  to  con 
sider  save  their  impotence,  their  poverty,  their  ruin; 
dated  it  from  the  hour  of  his  recital  to  her  of  the — at 
the  first  blush — quite  appalling  upshot  of  his  second 
and  conclusive  "scene  of  violence"  with  the  mistress 
of  his  fortune,  when  the  dire  terms  of  his  release  had 
had  to  be  formally,  and  oh!  so  abjectly,  acceded  to. 
She  "compromised,"  the  cruel  brute,  for  Four  Hun 
dred  Pounds  down — for  not  a  farthing  less  would  she 
stay  her  strength  from  "proceedings."  No  jury  in  the 
land  but  would  give  her  six,  on  the  nail  ("Oh  she 
knew  quite  where  she  was,  thank  you!")  and  he  might 
feel  lucky  to  get  off  with  so  whole  a  skin.  This  was 
the  sum,  then,  for  which  he  had  grovellingly  com 
pounded — under  an  agreement  sealed  by  a  supreme 
exchange  of  remarks. 

"  'Where  in  the  name  of  lifelong  ruin  are  you  to  find 
Four  Hundred  ? '  ' '  Miss  Cookham  had  mockingly  re 
peated  after  him  while  he  gasped  as  from  the  twist  of 

249 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

her  grip  on  his  collar.  "  That's  your  look-out,  and  I 
should  have  thought  you'd  have  made  sure  you  knew 
before  you  decided  on  your  base  perfidy."  And  then 
she  had  mouthed  and  minced,  with  ever  so  false  a 
gentility,  her  consistent,  her  sickening  conclusion.  "  Of 
course — I  may  mention  again — if  you  too  distinctly 
object  to  the  trouble  of  looking,  you  know  where  to 
find  me" 

"I  had  rather  starve  to  death  than  ever  go  within  a 
mile  of  you!"  Herbert  described  himself  as  having 
sweetly  answered;  and  that  was  accordingly  where 
they  devotedly  but  desperately  were — he  and  she,  pen 
niless  Nan  Drury.  Her  father,  of  Drury  &  Dean, 
was,  like  so  far  too  many  other  of  the  anxious  char 
acters  who  peered  through  the  dull  window-glass  of 
dusty  offices  at  Properley,  an  Estate  and  House  Agent, 
Surveyor,  Valuer  and  Auctioneer;  she  was  the  prettiest 
of  six,  with  two  brothers,  neither  of  the  least  use,  but, 
thanks  to  the  manner  in  which  their  main  natural 
protector  appeared  to  languish  under  the  accumula 
tion  of  his  attributes,  they  couldn't  be  said  very  par 
ticularly  or  positively  to  live.  Their  continued  col 
lective  existence  was  a  good  deal  of  a  miracle  even  to 
themselves,  though  they  had  fallen  into  the  way  of  not 
unnecessarily,  or  too  nervously,  exchanging  remarks 
upon  it,  and  had  even  in  a  sort,  from  year  to  year,  got 
used  to  it.  Nan's  brooding  pinkness  when  he  talked 
to  her,  her  so  very  parted  lips,  considering  her  pretty 
teeth,  her  so  very  parted  eyelids,  considering  her 

250 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

pretty  eyes,  all  of  which  might  have  been  those  of 
some  waxen  image  of  uncritical  faith,  cooled  the  heat 
of  his  helplessness  very  much  as  if  he  were  laying  his 
head  on  a  tense  silk  pillow.  She  had,  it  was  true, 
forms  of  speech,  familiar  watchwords,  that  affected 
him  as  small  scratchy  perforations  of  the  smooth  sur 
face  from  within;  but  his  pleasure  in  her  and  need  of 
her  were  independent  of  such  things  and  really  al 
most  altogether  determined  by  the  fact  of  the  happy, 
even  if  all  so  lonely,  forms  and  instincts  in  her  which 
claimed  kinship  with  his  own.  With  her  natural  ele 
gance  stamped  on  her  as  by  a  die,  with  her  dim  and 
disinherited  individual  refinement  of  grace,  which 
would  have  made  any  one  wonder  who  she  was  any 
where — hat  and  veil  and  feather-boa  and  smart  um 
brella-knob  and  all — with  her  regular  God-given  dis 
tinction  of  type,  in  fine,  she  couldn't  abide  vulgarity 
much  more  than  he  could. 

Therefore  it  didn't  seem  to  him,  under  his  stress,  to 
matter  particularly,  for  instance,  if  she  would  keep  on 
referring  so  many  things  to  the  time,  as  she  called  it, 
when  she  came  into  his  life — his  own  great  insistence 
and  contention  being  that  she  hadn't  in  the  least  entered 
there  till  his  mind  was  wholly  made  up  to  eliminate 
his  other  friend.  What  that  methodical  fury  was  so 
fierce  to  bring  home  to  him  was  the  falsity  to  herself 
involved  in  the  later  acquaintance;  whereas  just  his 
precious  right  to  hold  up  his  head  to  everything — before 
himself  at  least — sprang  from  the  fact  that  she  couldn't 

251 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

make  dates  fit  anyhow.  He  hadn't  so  much  as  heard 
of  his  true  beauty's  existence  (she  had  come  back  but 
a  few  weeks  before  from  her  two  years  with  her  terri 
bly  trying  deceased  aunt  at  Swindon,  previous  to  which 
absence  she  had  been  an  unnoticeable  chit)  till  days 
and  days,  ever  so  many,  upon  his  honour,  after  he  had 
struck  for  freedom  by  his  great  first  backing-out  letter 
—the  precious  document,  the  treat  for  a  British  jury, 
in  which,  by  itself,  Miss  Cookham's  firm  instructed 
her  to  recognise  the  prospect  of  a  fortune.  The  way 
the  ruffians  had  been  "her"  ruffians — it  appeared  as  if 
she  had  posted  them  behind  her  from  the  first  of  her 
beginning  her  game! — and  the  way  "instructions" 
bounced  out,  with  it,  at  a  touch,  larger  than  life,  as  if 
she  had  arrived  with  her  pocket  full  of  them!  The 
date  of  the  letter,  taken  with  its  other  connections,  and 
the  date  of  her  first  give-away  for  himself,  his  seeing 
her  get  out  of  the  Brighton  train  with  Bill  Frankle  that 
day  he  had  gone  to  make  the  row  at  the  Station  parcels' 
office  about  the  miscarriage  of  the  box  from  Wales — 
those  were  the  facts  it  sufficed  him  to  point  to,  as  he 
had  pointed  to  them  for  Nan  Drury's  benefit,  good 
ness  knew,  often  and  often  enough.  If  he  didn't  seek 
occasion  to  do  so  for  any  one  else's — in  open  court  as 
they  said — that  was  his  own  affair,  or  at  least  his  and 
Nan's. 

It  little  mattered,  meanwhile,  if  on  their  bench  of 
desolation,  all  that  summer — and  it  may  be  added  for 
summers  and  summers,  to  say  nothing  of  winters, 

252 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

there  and  elsewhere,  to  come — she  did  give  way  to  her 
artless  habit  of  not  contradicting  him  enough,  which 
led  to  her  often  trailing  up  and  down  before  him,  too 
complacently,  the  untimely  shreds  and  patches  of  his 
own  glooms  and  desperations.  "Well,  I'm  glad  I  am 
in  your  life,  terrible  as  it  is,  however  or  whenever  I  did 
come  in!"  and  "O/  course  you'd  rather  have  starved 
— and  it  seems  pretty  well  as  if  we  shall,  doesn't  it? — 
than  have  bought  her  off  by  a  false,  abhorrent  love, 
wouldn't  you?"  and  "It  isn't  as  if  she  hadn't  made  up 
to  you  the  way  she  did  before  you  had  so  much  as 
looked  at  her,  is  it?  or  as  if  you  hadn't  shown  her 
what  you  felt  her  really  to  be  before  you  had  so  much 
as  looked  at  me,  is  it  either?"  and  "Yes,  how  on 
earth,  pawning  the  shoes  on  your  feet,  you're  going  to 
raise  another  shilling — that's  what  you  want  to  know, 
poor  darling,  don't  you  ?" 

Ill 

His  creditor,  at  the  hour  it  suited  her,  transferred 
her  base  of  operations  to  town,  to  which  impenetrable 
scene  she  had  also  herself  retired;  and  his  raising  of 
the  first  Two  Hundred,  during  five  exasperated  and 
miserable  months,  and  then  of  another  Seventy  piece 
meal,  bleedingly,  after  long  delays  and  under  the  epis 
tolary  whiplash  cracked  by  the  London  solicitor  in 
his  wretched  ear  even  to  an  effect  of  the  very  report 
of  Miss  Cookham's  tongue — these  melancholy  efforts 

253 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

formed  a  scramble  up  an  arduous  steep  where  steps 
were  planted  and  missed,  and  bared  knees  were  ex 
coriated,  and  clutches  at  wayside  tufts  succeeded  and 
failed,  on  a  system  to  which  poor  Nan  could  have 
intelligently  entered  only  if  she  had  been  somehow  less 
ladylike.  She  kept  putting  into  his  mouth  the  sick 
quaver  of  where  he  should  find  the  rest,  the  always 
inextinguishable  rest,  long  after  he  had  in  silent  rage 
fallen  away  from  any  further  payment  at  all — at  first, 
he  had  but  too  blackly  felt,  for  himself,  to  the  still 
quite  possible  non-exclusion  of  some  penetrating  ray 
of  "exposure."  He  didn't  care  a  tuppenny  damn 
now,  and  in  point  of  fact,  after  he  had  by  hook  and  by 
crook  succeeded  in  being  able  to  unload  to  the  tune  of 
Two-Hundred-and-Seventy,  and  then  simply  returned 
the  newest  reminder  of  his  outstanding  obligation  un 
opened,  this  latter  belated  but  real  sign  of  fight,  the 
first  he  had  risked,  remarkably  caused  nothing  at  all 
to  happen;  nothing  at  least  but  his  being  moved  to 
quite  tragically  rueful  wonder  as  to  whether  exactly 
some  such  demonstration  mightn't  have  served  his  turn 
at  an  earlier  stage. 

He  could  by  this  time  at  any  rate  measure  his  ruin 
—with  three  fantastic  mortgages  on  his  house,  his 
shop,  his  stock,  and  a  burden  of  interest  to  carry  under 
which  his  business  simply  stretched  itself  inanimate, 
without  strength  for  a  protesting  kick,  without  breath 
for  an  appealing  groan.  Customers  lingering  for  fur 
ther  enjoyment  of  the  tasteful  remarks  he  had  culti- 

254 


THE  BENCH   OF  DESOLATION 

vated  the  unobstrusive  art  of  throwing  in,  would  at 
this  crisis  have  found  plenty  to  repay  them,  might  his 
wit  have  strayed  a  little  more  widely  still,  toward  a 
circuitous  egotistical  outbreak,  from  the  immediate 
question  of  the  merits  of  this  and  that  author  or  of  the 
condition  of  this  and  that  volume.  He  had  come  to 
be  conscious  through  it  all  of  strangely  glaring  at  peo 
ple  when  they  tried  to  haggle — and  not,  as  formerly, 
with  the  glare  of  derisive  comment  on  their  overdone 
humour,  but  with  that  of  fairly  idiotised  surrender — 
as  if  they  were  much  mistaken  in  supposing,  for  the 
sake  of  conversation,  that  he  might  take  himself  for 
saveable  by  the  difference  between  sevenpence  and 
ninepence.  He  watched  everything  impossible  and 
deplorable  happen  as  in  an  endless  prolongation  of 
his  nightmare;  watched  himself  proceed,  that  is,  with 
the  finest,  richest  incoherence,  to  the  due  preparation 
of  his  catastrophe.  Everything  came  to  seem  equally 
part  of  this — in  complete  defiance  of  proportion;  even 
his  final  command  of  detachment,  on  the  bench  of 
desolation  (where  each  successive  fact  of  his  dire  case 
regularly  cut  itself  out  black,  yet  of  senseless  silhouette, 
against  the  red  west)  in  respect  to  poor  Nan's  flat 
infelicities,  which  for  the  most  part  kept  no  pace  with 
the  years  or  with  change,  but  only  shook  like  hard 
peas  in  a  child's  rattle,  the  same  peas  a' ways,  of  course^ 
so  long  as  the  rattle  didn't  split  open  with  usage  or 
from  somebody's  act  of  irritation.  They  represented, 
or  they  had  long  done  so,  her  contribution  to  the  more 

255 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

superficial  of  the  two  branches  of  intimacy — the  intel 
lectual  alternative,  the  one  that  didn't  merely  consist 
of  her  preparing  herself  for  his  putting  his  arm  round 
her  waist. 

There  were  to  have  been  moments,  nevertheless,  all 
the  first  couple  of  years,  when  she  did  touch  in  him, 
though  to  his  actively  dissimulating  it,  a  more  or  less 
sensitive  nerve — moments  as  they  were  too,  to  do  her 
justice, 'when  she  treated  him  not  to  his  own  wisdom, 
or  even  folly,  served  up  cold,  but  to  a  certain  small 
bitter  fruit  of  her  personal,  her  unnatural,  plucking. 
"I  wonder  that  since  she  took  legal  advice  so  freely,  to 
come  down  on  you,  you  didn't  take  it  yourself,  a  little, 
before  being  so  sure  you  stood  no  chance.  Perhaps 
your  people  would  have  been  sure  of  something  quite 
different — perhaps,  I  only  say,  you  know."  She  "  only  " 
said  it,  but  she  said  it,  none  the  less,  in  the  early 
time,  about  once  a  fortnight.  In  the  later,  and  espe 
cially  after  their  marriage,  it  had  a  way  of  coming 
up  again  to  the  exclusion,  as  it  seemed  to  him,  of 
almost  everything  else;  in  fact  during  the  most  dismal 
years,  the  three  of  the  loss  of  their  two  children,  the 
long  stretch  of  sordid  embarrassment  ending  in  her 
death,  he  was  afterward  to  think  of  her  as  having 
generally  said  it  several  times  a  day.  He  was  then 
also  to  remember  that  his  answer,  before  she  had  learnt 
to  discount  it,  had  been  inveterately  at  hand:  "What 
would  any  solicitor  have  done  or  wanted  to  do  but 
drag  me  just  into  the  hideous  public  arena" — he  had 

256 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

always  so  put  it — "that  it  has  been  at  any  rate  my 
pride  and  my  honour,  the  one  rag  of  self-respect  cov 
ering  my  nakedness,  to  have  loathed  and  avoided  from 
every  point  of  view?" 

That  had  disposed  of  it  so  long  as  he  cared,  and  by 
the  time  he  had  ceased  to  care  for  anything  it  had  also 
lost  itself  in  the  rest  of  the  vain  babble  of  home.  After 
his  wife's  death,  during  his  year  of  mortal  solitude,  it 
awoke  again  as  an  echo  of  far-off  things — far-off,  very 
far-off,  because  he  felt  then  not  ten  but  twenty  years 
older.  That  was  by  reason  simply  of  the  dead  weight 
with  which  his  load  of  debt  had  settled — the  persist 
ence  of  his  misery  dragging  itself  out.  With  all  that 
had  come  and  gone  the  bench  of  desolation  was  still 
there,  just  as  the  immortal  flush  of  the  westward  sky 
kept  hanging  its  indestructible  curtain.  He  had  never 
got  away — everything  had  left  him,  but  he  himself  had 
been  able  to  turn  his  back  on  nothing — and  now,  his 
day's  labour  before  a  dirty  desk  at  the  Gas  Works 
ended,  he  more  often  than  not,  almost  any  season  at 
temperate  Properley  serving  his  turn,  took  his  slow 
straight  way  to  the  Land's  End  and,  collapsing  there 
to  rest,  sat  often  for  an  hour  at  a  time  staring  be 
fore  him.  He  might  in  these  sessions,  with  his  eyes 
on  the  grey-green  sea,  have  been  counting  again  and 
still  recounting  the  beads,  almost  all  worn  smooth, 
of  his  rosary  of  pain — which  had  for  the  fingers 
of  memory  and  the  recurrences  of  wonder  the  same 
felt  break  of  the  smaller  ones  by  the  larger  that  would 

257 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

have  aided   a  pious   mumble   in   some  dusky   altar- 
chapel. 

If  it  has  been  said  of  him  that  when  once  full  sub 
mersion,  as  from  far  back,  had  visibly  begun  to  await 
him,  he  watched  himself,  in  a  cold  lucidity,  do  punc 
tually  and  necessarily  each  of  the  deplorable  things 
that  were  inconsistent  with  his  keeping  afloat,  so  at 
present  again  he  might  have  been  held  agaze  just  by 
the  presented  grotesqueness  of  that  vigil.  Such  ghosts 
of  dead  seasons  were  all  he  had  now  to  watch — such  a 
recaptured  sense  for  instance  as  that  of  the  dismal 
unavailing  awareness  that  had  attended  his  act  of 
marriage.  He  had  let  submersion  final  and  absolute 
become  the  signal  for  it — a  mere  minor  determinant 
having  been  the  more  or  less  contemporaneously  un 
favourable  effect  on  the  business  of  Drury  &  Dean  of 
the  sudden  disappearance  of  Mr.  Dean  with  the  single 
small  tin  box  into  which  the  certificates  of  the  firm's 
credit  had  been  found  to  be  compressible.  That  had 
been  his  only  form — or  had  at  any  rate  seemed  his 
only  one.  He  couldn't  not  have  married,  no  doubt, 
just  as  he  couldn't  not  have  suffered  the  last  degree  of 
humiliation  and  almost  of  want,  or  just  as  his  wife  and 
children  couldn't  not  have  died  of  the  little  he  was 
able,  under  dire  reiterated  pinches,  to  do  for  them; 
but  it  was  "rum,"  for  final  solitary  brooding,  that  he 
hadn't  appeared  to  see  his  way  definitely  to  undertake 
the  support  of  a  family  till  the  last  scrap  of  his  little 
low-browed,  high-toned  business,  and  the  last  figment 

258 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

of  " property"  in  the  old  tiled  and  timbered  shell  that 
housed  it,  had  been  sacrificed  to  creditors  mustering 
six  rows  deep. 

Of  course  what  had  counted  too  in  the  odd  order 
was  that  even  at  the  end  of  the  two  or  three  years  he 
had  " allowed"  her,  Kate  Cookham,  gorged  with  his 
unholy  tribute,  had  become  the  subject  of  no  successful 
siege  on  the  part  either  of  Bill  Frankle  or,  by  what  he 
could  make  out,  of  any  one  else.  She  had  judged 
decent — he  could  do  her  that  justice — to  take  herself 
personally  out  of  his  world,  as  he  called  it,  for  good 
and  all,  as  soon  as  he  had  begun  regularly  to  bleed; 
and,  to  whatever  lucrative  practice  she  might  be  de 
voting  her  great  talents  in  London  or  elsewhere,  he  felt 
his  conscious  curiosity  about  her  as  cold,  with  time,  as 
the  passion  of  vain  protest  that  she  had  originally  left 
him  to.  He  could  recall  but  two  direct  echoes  of  her 
in  all  the  bitter  years — both  communicated  by  Bill 
Frankle,  disappointed  and  exposed  and  at  last  quite 
remarkably  ingenuous  sneak,  who  had  also,  from  far 
back,  taken  to  roaming  the  world,  but  who,  during  a 
period,  used  fitfully  and  ruefully  to  reappear.  Herbert 
Dodd  had  quickly  seen,  at  their  first  meeting — every 
one  met  every  one  sooner  or  later  at  Properley,  if  meet 
ing  it  could  always  be  called,  either  in  the  glare  or 
the  gloom  of  the  explodedly  attractive  Embankment — 
that  no  silver  stream  of  which  he  himself  had  been  the 
remoter  source  could  have  played  over  the  career  of 
this  all  but  repudiated  acquaintance.  That  hadn't 

259 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

fitted  with  his  first,  his  quite  primitive  raw  vision  of 
the  probabilities,  and  he  had  further  been  puzzled 
when,  much  later  on,  it  had  come  to  him  in  a  round 
about  way  that  Miss  Cookham  was  supposed  to  be,  or 
to  have  been,  among  them  for  a  few  days  "on  the 
quiet,"  and  that  Frankle,  who  had  seen  her  and  who 
claimed  to  know  more  about  it  than  he  said,  was  cited 
as  authority  for  the  fact.  But  he  hadn't  himself  at 
this  juncture  seen  Frankle;  he  had  only  wondered,  and 
a  degree  of  mystification  had  even  remained. 

That  memory  referred  itself  to  the  dark  days  of  old 
Drury's  smash,  the  few  weeks  between  his  partner's 
dastardly  flight  and  Herbert's  own  comment  on  it  in 
the  form  of  his  standing  up  with  Nan  for  the  nuptial 
benediction  of  the  Vicar  of  St.  Bernard's  on  a  very 
cold,  bleak  December  morning  and  amid  a  circle  of 
seven  or  eight  long-faced,  red-nosed  and  altogether 
dowdy  persons.  Poor  Nan  herself  had  come  to  affect 
him  as  scarce  other  than  red-nosed  and  dowdy  by 
that  time,  but  this  only  added,  in  his  then,  and  indeed 
in  his  lasting  view,  to  his  general  and  his  particular 
morbid  bravery.  He  had  cultivated  ignorance,  there 
were  small  inward  immaterial  luxuries  he  could  scrap- 
pily  cherish  even  among  other,  and  the  harshest,  desti 
tutions;  and  one  of  them  was  represented  by  this  easy 
refusal  of  his  mind  to  render  to  certain  passages  of 
his  experience,  to  various  ugly  images,  names,  associa 
tions,  the  homage  of  continued  attention.  That  served 
him,  that  helped  him;  but  what  happened  when,  a 

260 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

dozen  dismal  years  having  worn  themselves  away,  he 
sat  single  and  scraped  bare  again,  as  if  his  long  wave 
of  misfortune  had  washed  him  far  beyond  everything 
and  then  conspicuously  retreated,  was  that,  thus 
stranded  by  tidal  action,  deposited  in  the  lonely  hollow 
of  his  fate,  he  felt  even  sustaining  pride  turn  to  nought 
and  heard  no  challenge  from  it  when  old  mystifica 
tions,  stealing  forth  in  the  dusk  of  the  day's  work  done, 
scratched  at  the  door  of  speculation  and  hung  about, 
through  the  idle  hours,  for  irritated  notice. 

The  evenings  of  his  squalid  clerkship  were  all  leisure 
now,  but  there  was  nothing  at  all  near  home  on  the 
other  hand,  for  his  imagination,  numb  and  stiff  from 
its  long  chill,  to  begin  to  play  with.  Voices  from  far 
off  would  quaver  to  him  therefore  in  the  stillness; 
where  he  knew  for  the  most  recurrent,  little  by  little, 
the  faint  wail  of  his  wife.  He  had  become  deaf  to  it 
in  life,  but  at  present,  after  so  great  an  interval,  he 
listened  again,  listened  and  listened,  and  seemed  to 
hear  it  sound  as  by  the  pressure  of  some  weak  broken 
spring.  It  phrased  for  his  ear  her  perpetual  question, 
the  one  she  had  come  to  at  the  last  as  under  the  ob 
session  of  a  discovered  and  resented  wrong,  a  wrong 
withal  that  had  its  source  much  more  in  his  own  action 
than  anywhere  else.  "That  you  didn't  make  sure  she 
could  have  done  anything,  that  you  didn't  make  sure 
and  that  you  were  too  afraid!" — this  commemoration 
had  ended  by  playing  such  a  part  of  Nan's  finally  quite 
contracted  consciousness  as  to  exclude  everything  else. 

261 


THE   FINER  GRAIN 

At  the  time,  somehow,  he  had  made  his  terms  with 
it;  he  had  then  more  urgent  questions  to  meet  than 
that  of  the  poor  creature's  taste  in  worrying  pain;  but 
actually  it  struck  him — not  the  question,  but  the  fact 
itself  of  the  taste — as  the  one  thing  left  over  from  all 
that  had  come  and  gone.  So  it  was;  nothing  remained 
to  him  in  the  world,  on  the  bench  of  desolation,  but  the 
option  of  taking  up  that  echo — together  with  an  abun 
dance  of  free  time  for  doing  so.  That  he  hadn't  made 
sure  of  what  might  and  what  mightn't  have  been  done 
to  him,  that  he  had  been  too  afraid — had  the  proposi 
tion  a  possible  bearing  on  his  present  apprehension  of 
things?  To  reply  indeed  he  would  have  had  to  be 
able  to  say  what  his  present  apprehension  of  things, 
left  to  itself,  amounted  to;  an  uninspiring  effort  indeed 
he  judged  it,  sunk  to  so  poor  a  pitch  was  his  material 
of  thought — though  it  might  at  last  have  been  the  feat 
he  sought  to  perform  as  he  stared  at  the  grey-green  sea. 

IV 

IT  was  seldom  he  was  disturbed  in  any  form  of 
sequestered  speculation,  or  that  at  his  times  of  predi 
lection,  especially  that  of  the  long  autumn  blankness 
between  the  season  of  trippers  and  the  season  of  Bath- 
chairs,  there  were  westward  stragglers  enough  to  jar 
upon  his  settled  sense  of  priority.  For  himself  his 
seat,  the  term  of  his  walk,  was  consecrated;  it  had 
figured  to  him  for  years  as  the  last  (though  there  were 

262 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

others,  not  immediately  near  it,  and  differently  dis 
posed,  that  might  have  aspired  to  the  title) ;  so  that  he 
could  invidiously  distinguish  as  he  approached,  make 
out  from  a  distance  any  accident  of  occupation,  and 
never  draw  nearer  while  that  unpleasantness  lasted. 
What  he  disliked  was  to  compromise  on  his  tradition, 
whether  for  a  man,  a  woman  or  a  connoodling  couple; 
it  was  to  idiots  of  this  last  composition  he  most  ob 
jected,  he  having  sat  there,  in  the  past,  alone,  having 
sat  there  interminably  with  Nan,  having  sat  there  with 
—well,  with  other  women  when  women,  at  hours  of 
ease,  could  still  care  or  count  for  him,  but  having  never 
shared  the  place  with  any  shuffling  or  snuffling  stranger. 
It  was  a  world  of  fidgets  and  starts,  however,  the 
world  of  his  present  dreariness — he  alone  possessed  in 
it,  he  seemed  to  make  out,  of  the  secret,  of  the  dignity  of 
sitting  still  with  one's  fate;  so  that  if  he  took  a  turn 
about  or  rested  briefly  elsewhere  even  foolish  philan 
derers — though  this  would  never  have  been  his  and 
Nan's  way — ended  soon  by  some  adjournment  as  visi 
bly  pointless  as  their  sprawl.  Then,  their  backs  turned, 
he  would  drop  down  on  it,  the  bench  of  desolation — 
which  was  what  he,  and  he  only,  made  it  by  sad  adop 
tion;  where,  for  that  matter,  moreover,  once  he  had 
settled  at  his  end,  it  was  marked  that  nobody  else 
ever  came  to  sit.  He  saw  people,  along  the  Marina, 
take  this  liberty  with  other  resting  presences;  but  his 
own  struck  them  perhaps  in  general  as  either  of  too 
grim  or  just  of  too  dingy  a  vicinage.  He  might  have 

263 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

affected  the  fellow-lounger  as  a  man  evil,  unsociable, 
possibly  engaged  in  working  out  the  idea  of  a  crime; 
or  otherwise,  more  probably — for  on  the  whole  he 
surely  looked  harmless — devoted  to  the  worship  of 
some  absolutely  unpractical  remorse. 

On  a  certain  October  Saturday  he  had  got  off,  as 
usual,  early;  but  the  afternoon  light,  his  pilgrimage 
drawing  to  its  aim,  could  still  show  him,  at  long  range, 
the  rare  case  of  an  established  usurper.  His  impulse 
was  then,  as  by  custom,  to  deviate  a  little  and  wait,  all 
the  more  that  the  occupant  of  the  bench  was  a  lady, 
and  that  ladies,  when  alone,  were — at  that  austere  end 
of  the  varied  frontal  stretch — markedly  discontinuous; 
but  he  kept  on  at  sight  of  this  person's  rising,  while  he 
was  still  fifty  yards  off,  and  proceeding,  her  back 
turned,  to  the  edge  of  the  broad  terrace,  the  outer  line 
of  which  followed  the  interspaced  succession  of  seats 
and  was  guarded  by  an  iron  rail  from  the  abruptly 
lower  level  of  the  beach.  Here  she  stood  before  the 
sea,  while  our  friend  on  his  side,  recognising  no  reason 
to  the  contrary,  sank  into  the  place  she  had  quitted. 
There  were  other  benches,  eastward  and  off  by  the 
course  of  the  drive,  for  vague  ladies.  The  lady  indeed 
thus  thrust  upon  Herbert's  vision  might  have  struck  an 
observer  either  as  not  quite  vague  or  as  vague  with  a 
perverse  intensity  suggesting  design. 

Not  that  our  own  observer  at  once  thought  of  these 
things;  he  only  took  in,  and  with  no  great  interest,  that 
the  obtruded  presence  was  a  "real"  lady;  that  she  was 

264 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

dressed — he  noticed  such  matters — with  a  certain  ele 
gance  of  propriety  or  intention  of  harmony;  and  that 
she  remained  perfectly  still  for  a  good  many  minutes; 
so  many  in  fact  that  he  presently  ceased  to  heed  her, 
and  that  as  she  wasn't  straight  before  him,  but  as  far 
to  the  left  as  was  consistent  with  his  missing  her  pro 
file,  he  had  turned  himself  to  one  of  his  sunsets  again 
(though  it  wasn't  quite  one  of  his  best)  and  let  it  hold 
him  for  a  time  that  enabled  her  to  alter  her  attitude 
and  present  a  fuller  view.  Without  other  movement, 
but  her  back  now  to  the  sea  and  her  face  to  the  odd 
person  who  had  appropriated  her  corner,  she  had 
taken  a  sustained  look  at  him  before  he  was  aware  she 
had  stirred.  On  that  apprehension,  however,  he  be 
came  also  promptly  aware  of  her  direct,  her  applied 
observation.  As  his  sense  of  this  quickly  increased 
he  wondered  who  she  was  and  what  she  wanted — 
what,  as  it  were,  was  the  matter  with  her;  it  suggested 
to  him,  the  next  thing,  that  she  had,  under  some 
strange  idea,  actually  been  waiting  for  him.  Any  idea 
about  him  to-day  on  the  part  of  any  one  could  only  be 
strange. 

Yes,  she  stood  there  with  the  ample  width  of  the 
Marina  between  them,  but  turned  to  him,  for  all  the 
world,  as  to  show  frankly  that  she  was  concerned  with 
him.  And  she  was — oh  yes — a  real  lady:  a  middle- 
aged  person,  of  good  appearance  and  of  the  best  condi 
tion,  in  quiet  but  " handsome"  black,  save  for  very 
fresh  white  kid  gloves,  and  with  a  pretty,  dotty,  becom- 

265 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

ing  veil,  predominantly  white,  adjusted  to  her  counte 
nance;  which  through  it  somehow,  even  to  his  imper 
fect  sight,  showed  strong  fine  black  brows  and  what 
he  would  have  called  on  the  spot  character.  But  she 
was  pale;  her  black  brows  were  the  blacker  behind  the 
flattering  tissue;  she  still  kept  a  hand,  for  support,  on 
the  terrace-rail,  while  the  other,  at  the  end  of  an  ex 
tended  arm  that  had  an  effect  of  rigidity,  clearly  pressed 
hard  on  the  knob  of  a  small  and  shining  umbrella,  the 
lower  extremity  of  whose  stick  was  equally,  was  sus- 
tainingly,  firm  on  the  walk.  So  this  mature,  quali 
fied,  important  person  stood  and  looked  at  the  limp, 
undistinguished — oh  his  values  of  aspect  now ! — shabby 
man  on  the  bench. 

It  was  extraordinary,  but  the  fact  of  her  interest,  by 
immensely  surprising,  by  immediately  agitating  him, 
blinded  him  at  first  to  her  identity  and,  for  the  space  of 
his  long  stare,  diverted  him  from  it;  with  which  even 
then,  when  recognition  did  break,  the  sense  of  the 
shock,  striking  inward,  simply  consumed  itself  in  gap 
ing  stillness.  He  sat  there  motionless  and  weak,  fairly 
faint  with  surprise,  and  there  was  no  instant,  in  all  the 
succession  of  so  many,  at  which  Kate  Cookham  could 
have  caught  the  special  sign  of  his  intelligence.  Yet 
that  she  did  catch  something  he  saw — for  he  saw  her 
steady  herself,  by  her  two  supported  hands,  to  meet 
it;  while,  after  she  had  done  so,  a  very  wonderful  thing 
happened,  of  which  he  could  scarce,  later  on,  have 
made  a  clear  statement,  though  he  was  to  think  it  over 

266 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

again  and  again.  She  moved  toward  him,  she  reached 
him,  she  stood  there,  she  sat  down  near  him,  he  merely 
passive  and  wonderstruck,  unresentfully  "  impressed," 
gaping  and  taking  it  in — and  all  as  with  an  open  allow 
ance  on  the  part  of  each,  so  that  they  positively  and 
quite  intimately  met  in  it,  o  the  impertinence  for  their 
case,  this  case  that  brought  them  again,  after  horrible 
years,  face  to  face,  of  the  vanity,  the  profanity,  the  im 
possibility,  of  anything  between  them  but  silence. 

Nearer  to  him,  beside  him  at  a  considerable  interval 
(oh  she  was  immensely  considerate!)  she  presented 
him,  in  the  sharp  terms  of  her  transformed  state — 
but  thus  the  more  amply,  formally,  ceremoniously — 
with  the  reasons  that  would  serve  him  best  for  not  hav 
ing  precipitately  known  her.  She  was  simply  another 
and  a  totally  different  person,  and  the  exhibition  of  it 
to  which  she  had  proceeded  with  this  solemn  anxiety 
was  all,  obviously,  for  his  benefit — once  he  had,  as  he 
appeared  to  be  doing,  provisionally  accepted  her  ap 
proach.  He  had  remembered  her  as  inclined  to  the 
massive  and  disowned  by  the  graceful;  but  this  was  a 
spare,  fine,  worn,  almost  wasted  lady — who  had  re 
paired  waste,  it  was  true,  however,  with  something  he 
could  only  appreciate  as  a  rich  accumulation  of  man 
ner.  She  was  strangely  older,  so  far  as  that  went— 
marked  by  experience  and  as  if  many  things  had 
happened  to  her;  her  face  had  suffered,  to  its  improve 
ment,  contraction  and  concentration;  and  if  he  had 
granted,  of  old  and  from  the  first,  that  her  eyes  were 

267 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

remarkable,  had  they  yet  ever  had  for  him  this  sombre 
glow?  Withal,  something  said,  she  had  flourished — 
he  felt  it,  wincing  at  it,  as  that;  she  had  had  a  life,  a 
career,  a  history — something  that  her  present  waiting 
air  and  nervous  consciousness  couldn't  prevent  his 
noting  there  as  a  deeply  latent  assurance.  She  had 
flourished,  she  had  flourished — though  to  learn  it  after 
this  fashion  was  somehow  at  the  same  time  not  to  feel 
she  flaunted  it.  It  wasn't  thus  execration  that  she 
revived  in  him;  she  made  in  fact,  exhibitively,  as  he 
could  only  have  put  it,  the  matter  of  long  ago  irrele 
vant,  and  these  extraordinary  minutes  of  their  recon 
stituted  relation — how  many?  how  few? — addressed 
themselves  altogether  to  new  possibilities. 

Still  it  after  a  little  awoke  in  him  as  with  the  throb  of 
a  touched  nerve  that  his  own  very  attitude  was  supply 
ing  a  connection;  he  knew  presently  that  he  wouldn't 
have  had  her  go,  couldn't  have  made  a  sign  to  her 
for  it — which  was  what  she  had  been  uncertain  of — 
without  speaking  to  him;  and  that  therefore  he  was,  as 
at  the  other,  the  hideous  time,  passive  to  whatever  she 
might  do.  She  was  even  yet,  she  was  always,  in  pos 
session  of  him;  she  had  known  how  and  where  to  find 
him  and  had  appointed  that  he  should  see  her,  and, 
though  he  had  never  dreamed  it  was  again  to  happen 
to  him,  he  was  meeting  it  already  as  if  it  might  have 
been  the  only  thing  that  the  least  humanly  could.  Yes, 
he  had  come  back  there  to  flop,  by  long  custom,  upon 
the  bench  of  desolation  as  the  man  in  the  whole  place, 

268 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

precisely,  to  whom  nothing  worth  more  than  tuppence 
could  happen;  whereupon,  in  the  grey  desert  of  his 
consciousness,  the  very  earth  had  suddenly  opened  and 
flamed.  With  this,  further,  it  came  over  him  that  he 
hadn't  been  prepared  and  that  his  wretched  appear 
ance  must  show  it.  He  wasn't  fit  to  receive  a  visit — 
any  visit;  a  flush  for  his  felt  misery,  in  the  light  of  her 
opulence,  broke  out  in  his  lean  cheeks.  But  if  he 
coloured  he  sat  as  he  was — she  should  at  least,  as  a 
visitor,  be  satisfied.  His  eyes  only,  at  last,  turned 
from  her  and  resumed  a  little  their  gaze  at  the  sea. 
That,  however,  didn't  relieve  him,  and  he  perpetrated 
in  the  course  of  another  moment  the  odd  desper 
ate  gesture  of  raising  both  his  hands  to  his  face  and 
letting  them,  while  he  pressed  it  to  them,  cover  and 
guard  it.  It  was  as  he  held  them  there  that  she  at 
last  spoke. 

"I'll  go  away  if  you  wish  me  to."  And  then  she 
waited  a  moment.  "I  mean  now — now  that  you've 
seen  I'm  here.  I  wanted  you  to  know  it,  and  I  thought 
of  writing — I  was  afraid  of  our  meeting  accidentally. 
Then  I  was  afraid  that  if  I  wrote  you  might  refuse. 
So  I  thought  of  this  way — as  I  knew  you  must  come 
out  here."  She  went  on  with  pauses,  giving  him  a 
chance  to  make  a  sign.  "I've  waited  several  days. 
But  I'll  do  what  you  wish.  Only  I  should  like  in  that 
case  to  come  back."  Again  she  stopped;  but  strange 
was  it  to  him  that  he  wouldn't  have  made  her  break 
off.  She  held  him  in  boundless  wonder.  "I  came 

269 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

down — I  mean  I  came  from  town — on  purpose.  I'm 
staying  on  still,  and  I've  a  great  patience  and  will  give 
you  time.  Only  may  I  say  it's  important?  Now  that 
I  do  see  you,"  she  brought  out  in  the  same  way,  "I 
see  how  inevitable  it  was — I  mean  that  I  should  have 
wanted  to  come.  But  you  must  feel  about  it  as  you 
can,"  she  wound  up — "till  you  get  used  to  the  idea." 

She  spoke  so  for  accommodation,  for  discretion,  for 
some  ulterior  view  already  expressed  in  her  manner, 
that,  after  taking  well  in,  from  behind  his  hands,  that 
this  was  her  very  voice — oh  ladylike! — heard,  and 
heard  in  deprecation  of  displeasure,  after  long  years 
again,  he  uncovered  his  face  and  freshly  met  her  eyes. 
More  than  ever  he  couldn't  have  known  her.  Less 
and  less  remained  of  the  figure  all  the  facts  of  which 
had  long  ago  so  hardened  for  him.  She  was  a  hand 
some,  grave,  authoritative,  but  refined  and,  as  it  were, 
physically  rearranged  person — she,  the  outrageous  vul 
garity  of  whose  prime  assault  had  kept  him  shuddering 
so  long  as  a  shudder  was  in  him.  That  atrocity  in 
her  was  what  everything  had  been  built  on,  but  some 
how,  all  strangely,  it  was  slipping  from  him;  so  that, 
after  the  oddest  fashion  conceivable,  when  he  felt  he 
mustn't  let  her  go,  it  was  as  if  he  were  putting  out  his 
hand  to  save  the  past,  the  hideous  real  unalterable 
past,  exactly  as  she  had  been  the  cause  of  its  being  and 
the  cause  of  his  undergoing  it.  He  should  have  been 
too  awfully  "sold"  if  he  wasn't  going  to  have  been 
right  about  her. 

270 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

"I  don't  mind,"  he  heard  himself  at  last  say.  Not 
to  mind  had  seemed  for  the  instant  the  length  he  was 
prepared  to  go;  but  he  was  afterward  aware  of  how 
soon  he  must  have  added:  " You've  come  on  purpose 
to  see  me?"  He  was  on  the  point  of  putting  to  her 
further:  "What  then  do  you  want  of  me?"  But  he 
would  keep — yes,  in  time — from  appearing  to  show  he 
cared.  If  he  showed  he  cared,  where  then  would  be 
his  revenge?  So  he  was  already,  within  five  minutes, 
thinking  his  revenge  uncomfortably  over  instead  of 
just  comfortably  knowing  it.  What  came  to  him,  at 
any  rate,  as  they  actually  fell  to  talk,  was  that,  with 
such  precautions,  considerations,  reduplications  of  con 
sciousness,  almost  avowed  feelings  of  her  way  on  her 
own  part,  and  light  fingerings  of  his  chords  of  sen 
sibility,  she  was  understanding,  she  had  understood, 
more  things  than  all  the  years,  up  to  this  strange  even 
tide,  had  given  him  an  inkling  of.  They  talked,  they 
went  on — he  hadn't  let  her  retreat,  to  whatever  it  com 
mitted  him  and  however  abjectly  it  did  so;  yet  keeping 
off  and  off,  dealing  with  such  surface  facts  as  involved 
ancient  acquaintance  but  held  abominations  at  bay. 
The  recognition,  the  attestation  that  she  had  come 
down  for  him,  that  there  would  be  reasons,  that  she 
had  even  hovered  and  watched,  assured  herself  a  little 
of  his  habits  (which  she  managed  to  speak  of  as  if,  on 
their  present  ampler  development,  they  were  much  to 
be  deferred  to),  detained  them  enough  to  make  vivid 
how,  listen  as  stiffly  or  as  serenely  as  he  might,  she  sat 

271 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

there  in  fear,  just  as  she  had  so  stood  there  at  first,  and 
that  her  fear  had  really  to  do  with  her  calculation  of 
some  sort  of  chance  with  him.  What  chance  could  it 
possibly  be?  Whatever  it  might  have  done,  on  this 
prodigious  showing,  with  Kate  Cookham,  it  made  the 
present  witness  to  the  state  of  his  fortunes  simply 
exquisite:  he  ground  his  teeth  secretly  together  as  he 
saw  he  should  have  to  take  that.  For  what  did  it 
mean  but  that  she  would  have  liked  to  pity  him  if  she 
could  have  done  it  with  safety  ?  Ah,  however,  he  must 
give  her  no  measure  of  safety! 

By  the  time  he  had  remarked,  with  that  idea,  that 
she  probably  saw  few  changes  about  them  there  that 
weren't  for  the  worse — the  place  was  going  down, 
down  and  down,  so  fast  that  goodness  knew  where  it 
would  stop — and  had  also  mentioned  that  in  spite  of 
this  he  himself  remained  faithful,  with  all  its  faults 
loving  it  still;  by  the  time  he  had,  after  that  fashion, 
superficially  indulged  her,  adding  a  few  further  light 
and  just  sufficiently  dry  reflections  on  local  matters, 
the  disappearance  of  landmarks  and  important  per 
sons,  the  frequency  of  gales,  the  low  policy  of  the  town- 
council  in  playing  down  to  cheap  excursionists:  by  the 
time  he  had  so  acquitted  himself,  and  she  had  observed, 
of  her  own  motion,  that  she  was  staying  at  the  Royal, 
which  he  knew  for  the  time-honoured,  the  conserva 
tive  and  exclusive  hotel,  he  had  made  out  for  himself 
one  thing  at  least,  the  amazing  fact  that  he  had  been 
landed  by  his  troubles,  at  the  end  of  time,  in  a  "  social 

272 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

relation,"  of  all  things  in  the  world,  and  how  of  that 
luxury  he  was  now  having  unprecedented  experience. 
He  had  but  once  in  his  life  had  his  nose  in  the  Royal, 
on  the  occasion  of  his  himself  delivering  a  parcel  dur 
ing  some  hiatus  in  his  succession  of  impossible  small 
boys  and  meeting  in  the  hall  the  lady  who  had  bought 
of  him,  in  the  morning,  a  set  of  Crabbe,  largely,  he 
flattered  himself,  under  the  artful  persuasion  of  his 
acute  remarks  on  that  author,  gracefully  associated  by 
him,  in  this  colloquy,  he  remembered,  with  a  glance  at 
Charles  Lamb  as  well,  and  who  went  off  in  a  day  or 
two  without  settling,  though  he  received  her  cheque 
from  London  three  or  four  months  later. 

That  hadn't  been  a  social  relation;  and  truly,  deep 
within  his  appeal  to  himself  to  be  remarkable,  to  be 
imperturbable  and  impenetrable,  to  be  in  fact  quite 
incomparable  now,  throbbed  the  intense  vision  of  his 
drawing  out  and  draining  dry  the  sensation  he  had 
begun  to  taste.  He  would  do  it,  moreover — that 
would  be  the  refinement  of  his  art — not  only  without 
the  betraying  anxiety  of  a  single  question,  but  just 
even  by  seeing  her  flounder  (since  she  must,  in  a 
vagueness  deeply  disconcerting  to  her)  as  to  her  real 
effect  on  him.  She  was  distinctly  floundering  by  the 
time  he  had  brought  her — it  had  taken  ten  minutes- 
down  to  a  consciousness  of  absurd  and  twaddling 
topics,  to  the  reported  precarious  state,  for  instance,  of 
the  syndicate  running  the  Bijou  Theatre  at  the  Pier 
head — all  as  an  admonition  that  she  might  want  him 

273 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

to  want  to  know  why  she  was  thus  waiting  on  him, 
might  want  it  for  all  she  was  worth,  before  he  had 
ceased  to  be  so  remarkable  as  not  to  ask  her.  He 
didn't — and  this  assuredly  was  wondrous  enough — 
want  to  do  anything  worse  to  her  than  let  her  flounder; 
but  he  was  willing  to  do  that  so  long  as  it  mightn't 
prevent  his  seeing  at  least  where  he.  was.  He  seemed 
still  to  see  where  he  was  even  at  the  minute  that  fol 
lowed  her  final  break-off,  clearly  intended  to  be  reso 
lute,  from  make-believe  talk. 

"I  wonder  if  I  might  prevail  on  you  to  come  to  tea 
with  me  to-morrow  at  five." 

He  didn't  so  much  as  answer  it — though  he  could 
scarcely  believe  his  ears.  To-morrow  was  Sunday, 
and  the  proposal  referred,  clearly,  to  the  custom  of 
"five-o'clock"  tea,  known  to  him  only  by  the  con 
temporary  novel  of  manners  and  the  catchy  advertise 
ment  of  table-linen.  He  had  never  in  his  life  been 
present  at  any  such  luxurious  rite,  but  he  was  offering 
practical  indifference  to  it  as  a  false  mark  of  his  sense 
that  his  social  relation  had  already  risen  to  his  chin. 
"  I  gave  up  my  very  modest,  but  rather  interesting  little 
old  book  business,  perhaps  you  know,  ever  so  long  ago." 

She  floundered  so  that  she  could  say  nothing — meet 
that  with  no  possible  word;  all  the  less  too  that  his 
tone,  casual  and  colourless,  wholly  defied  any  appre 
hension  of  it  as  a  reverse.  Silence  only  came;  but 
after  a  moment  she  returned  to  her  effort.  "If  you 
can  come  I  shall  be  at  home.  To  see  you  otherwise 

274 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

than  thus  was  in  fact  what,  as  I  tell  you,  I  came  down 
for.  But  I  leave  it,"  she  returned,  "to  your  feeling." 

He  had  at  this,  it  struck  him,  an  inspiration;  which 
he  required  however  a  minute  or  two  to  decide  to  carry 
out;  a  minute  or  two  during  which  the  shake  of  his 
foot  over  his  knee  became  an  intensity  of  fidget.  "Of 
course  I  know  I  still  owe  you  a  large  sum  of  money. 
If  it's  about  that  you  wish  to  see  me,"  he  went  on,  "I 
may  as  well  tell  you  just  here  that  I  shall  be  able  to 
meet  my  full  obligation  in  the  future  as  little  as  I've 
met  it  in  the  past.  I  can  never,"  said  Herbert  Dodd, 
"pay  up  that  balance." 

He  had  looked  at  her  while  he  spoke,  but  on  finish 
ing  looked  off  at  the  sea  again  and  continued  to  agitate 
his  foot.  He  knew  now  what  he  had  done  and  why; 
and  the  sense  of  her  fixed  dark  eyes  on  him  during  his 
speech  and  after  didn't  alter  his  small  contentment. 
Yet  even  when  she  still  said  nothing  he  didn't  turn 
round;  he  simply  kept  his  corner  as  if  that  were  his 
point  made,  should  it  even  be  the  last  word  between 
them.  It  might  have  been,  for  that  matter,  from  the 
-way  in  which  she  presently  rose,  gathering  herself,  her 
fine  umbrella  and  her  very  small  smart  reticule,  in  the 
construction  of  which  shining  gilt  much  figured,  well 
together,  and,  after  standing  another  instant,  moved 
across  to  the  rail  of  the  terrace  as  she  had  done  before 
and  remained,  as  before,  with  her  back  to  him,  though 
this  time,  it  well  might  be,  under  a  different  fear.  A 
quarter  of  an  hour  ago  she  hadn't  tried  him,  and  had 

275 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

had  that  anxiety;  now  that  she  had  tried  him  it  wasn't 
easier — but  she  was  thinking  what  she  still  could  do. 
He  left  her  to  think — nothing  in  fact  more  interesting 
than  the  way  she  might  decide  had  ever  happened  to 
him;  but  it  was  a  part  of  this  also  that  as  she  turned 
round  and  came  nearer  again  he  didn't  rise,  he  gave 
her  no  help.  If  she  got  any,  at  least,  from  his  looking 
up  at  her  only,  meeting  her  fixed  eyes  once  more  in 
silence,  that  was  her  own  affair.  "You  must  think," 
she  said — ayou  must  take  all  your  time,  but  I  shall  be 
at  home."  She  left  it  to  him  thus — she  insisted,  with 
her  idea,  on  leaving  him  something  too.  And  on  her 
side  as  well  she  showed  an  art — which  resulted,  after 
another  instant,  in  his  having  to  rise  to  his  feet.  He 
flushed  afresh  as  he  did  it — it  exposed  him  so  shabbily 
the  more;  and  now  if  she  took  him  in,  with  each  of  his 
seedy  items,  from  head  to  foot,  he  didn't  and  couldn't 
and  wouldn't  know  it,  attaching  his  eyes  hard  and 
straight  to  something  quite  away  from  them. 

It  stuck  in  his  throat  to  say  he'd  come,  but  she  had 
so  curious  a  way  with  her  that  he  still  less  could  say  he 
wouldn't,  and  in  a  moment  had  taken  refuge  in  some 
thing  that  was  neither.  "Are  you  married?" — he  put 
it  to  her  with  that  plainness,  though  it  had  seemed 
before  he  said  it  to  do  more  for  him  than  while  she 
waited  before  replying. 

"No,  I'm  not  married,"  she  said;  and  then  had 
another  wait  that  might  have  amounted  to  a  question 
of  what  this  had  to  do  with  it. 

276 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

He  surely  couldn't  have  told  her;  so  that  he  had 
recourse,  a  little  poorly  as  he  felt,  but  to  an  "Oh!" 
that  still  left  them  opposed.  He  turned  away  for  it — 
that  is  for  the  poorness,  which,  lingering  in  the  air, 
had  almost  a  vulgar  platitude;  and  when  he  presently 
again  wheeled  about  she  had  fallen  off  as  for  quitting 
him,  only  with  a  pause,  once  more,  for  a  last  look.  It 
was  all  a  bit  awkward,  but  he  had  another  happy 
thought,  which  consisted  in  his  silently  raising  his  hat 
as  for  a  sign  of  dignified  dismissal.  He  had  cultivated 
of  old,  for  the  occasions  of  life,  the  right,  the  discrimi 
nated  bow,  and  now,  out  of  the  grey  limbo  of  the  time 
when  he  could  care  for  such  things,  this  flicker  of 
propriety  leaped  and  worked  She  might,  for  that 
matter,  herself  have  liked  it;  since,  receding  further, 
only  with  her  white  face  toward  him,  she  paid  it  the 
homage  of  submission.  He  remained  dignified,  and 
she  almost  humbly  went. 


NOTHING  in  the  world,  on  the  Sunday  afternoon, 
could  have  prevented  him  from  going;  he  was  not  after 
all  destitute  of  three  or  four  such  articles  of  clothing 
as,  if  they  wouldn't  particularly  grace  the  occasion, 
wouldn't  positively  dishonour  it.  That  deficiency  might 
have  kept  him  away,  but  no  voice  of  the  spirit,  no  con 
sideration  of  pride.  It  sweetened  his  impatience  in 
fact — for  he  fairly  felt  it  a  long  time  to  wait — that  his 

277 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

pride  would  really  most  find  its  account  in  his  accept 
ance  of  these  conciliatory  steps.  From  the  moment  he 
could  put  it  in  that  way — that  he  couldn't  refuse  to 
hear  what  she  might  have,  so  very  elaborately,  to  say 
for  herself — he  ought  certainly  to  be  at  his  ease;  in 
illustration  of  which  he  whistled  odd  snatches  to  him 
self  as  he  hung  about  on  that  cloud-dappled  autumn 
Sunday,  a  mild  private  minstrelsy  that  his  lips  hadn't 
known  since  when?  The  interval  of  the  twenty-four 
hours,  made  longer  by  a  night  of  many  more  revivals 
than  oblivions,  had  in  fact  dragged  not  a  little;  in  spite 
of  which,  however,  our  extremely  brushed-up  and 
trimmed  and  polished  friend  knew  an  unprecedented 
flutter  as  he  was  ushered,  at  the  Royal  Hotel,  into 
Miss  Cookham's  sitting-room.  Yes,  it  was  an  adven 
ture,  and  he  had  never  had  an  adventure  in  his  life; 
the  term,  for  him,  was  essentially  a  term  of  high 
appreciation — such  as  disqualified  for  that  figure, 
under  due  criticism,  every  single  passage  of  his  past 
career. 

What  struck  him  at  the  moment  as  qualifying  in 
the  highest  degree  this  actual  passage  was  the  fact 
that  at  no  great  distance  from  his  hostess  in  the  luxu 
rious  room,  as  he  apprehended  it,  in  which  the  close  of 
day  had  begun  to  hang  a  few  shadows,  sat  a  gentle 
man  who  rose  as  she  rose,  and  whose  name  she  at 
once  mentioned  to  him.  He  had  for  Herbert  Dodd  all 
the  air  of  a  swell,  the  gentleman — rather  red-faced 
and  bald-headed,  but  moustachioed,  waistcoated,  neck- 

278 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

tied  to  the  highest  pitch,  with  an  effect  of  chains  and 
rings,  of  shining  teeth  in  a  glassily  monocular  smile; 
a  wondrous  apparition  to  have  been  asked  to  "meet" 
him,  as  in  contemporary  fiction,  or  for  him  to  have 
been  asked  to  meet.  "  Captain  Roper,  Mr.  Herbert 
Dodd" — their  entertainer  introduced  them,  yes;  but 
with  a  sequel  immediately  afterward  more  disconcert 
ing  apparently  to  Captain  Roper  himself  even  than  to 
her  second  and  more  breathless  visitor;  a  "Well  then, 
good-bye  till  the  next  time,"  with  a  hand  thrust  straight 
out,  which  allowed  the  personage  so  addressed  no  alter 
native  but  to  lay  aside  his  teacup,  even  though  Herbert 
saw  there  was  a  good  deal  left  in  it,  and  glare  about 
him  for  his  hat.  Miss  Cookham  had  had  her  tea-tray 
on  a  small  table  before  her,  she  had  served  Captain 
Roper  while  waiting  for  Mr.  Dodd;  but  she  simply 
dismissed  him  now,  with  a  high  sweet  unmistakable 
decision,  a  knowledge  of  what  she  was  about,  as  our 
hero  would  have  called  it,  which  enlarged  at  a  stroke 
the  latter's  view  of  the  number  of  different  things  and 
sorts  of  things,  in  the  sphere  of  the  manners  and  ways 
of  those  living  at  their  ease,  that  a  social  relation  would 
put  before  one.  Captain  Roper  would  have  liked  to 
remain,  would  have  liked  more  tea,  but  Kate  signified 
in  this  direct  fashion  that  she  had  had  enough  of  him. 
Herbert  had  seen  things,  in  his  walk  of  life — rough 
things,  plenty;  but  never  things  smoothed  with  that 
especial  smoothness,  carried  out  as  it  were  by  the  fine 
form  of  Captain  Roper's  own  retreat,  which  included 

279 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

even  a  bright  convulsed  leave-taking  cognisance  of  the 
plain,  vague  individual,  of  no  lustre  at  all  and  with  the 
very  low-class  guard  of  an  old  silver  watch  buttoned 
away  under  an  ill-made  coat,  to  whom  he  was  sacrificed. 

It  came  to  Herbert  as  he  left  the  place  a  shade  less 
remarkable — though  there  was  still  wonder  enough 
and  to  spare — that  he  had  been  even  publicly  and  de 
signedly  sacrificed;  exactly  so  that,  as  the  door  closed 
behind  him,  Kate  Cookham,  standing  there  to  wait 
for  it,  could  seem  to  say,  across  the  room,  to  the  friend 
of  her  youth,  only  by  the  expression  of  her  fine  eyes: 
"There— see  what  I  do  for  you!"  "For"  him— that 
was  the  extraordinary  thing,  and  not  less  so  that  he 
was  already,  within  three  minutes,  after  this  fashion, 
taking  it  in  as  by  the  intensity  of  a  new  light;  a  light 
that  was  one  somehow  with  this  rich  inner  air  of  the 
plush-draped  and  much-mirrored  hotel,  where  the  fire- 
glow  and  the  approach  of  evening  confirmed  together 
the  privacy,  and  the  loose  curtains  at  the. wide  window 
were  parted  for  a  command  of  his  old  lifelong  Parade 
— the  field  of  life  so  familiar  to  him  from  below  and  in 
the  wind  and  the  wet,  but  which  he  had  never  in  all 
the  long  years  hung  over  at  this  vantage. 

"He's  an  acquaintance,  but  a  bore,"  his  hostess 
explained  in  respect  to  Captain  Roper.  "He  turned 
up  yesterday,  but  I  didn't  invite  him,  and  I  had  said 
to  him  before  you  came  in  that  I  was  expecting  a  gen 
tleman  with  whom  I  should  wish  to  be  alone.  I  go 
quite  straight  at  my  idea  that  way,  as  a  rule;  but  you 

280 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

know,"  she  now  strikingly  went  on,  "how  straight  I 
go.  And  he  had  had,"  she  added,  "his  tea." 

Dodd  had  been  looking  all  round — had  taken  in, 
with  the  rest,  the  brightness,  the  distinguished  elegance, 
as  he  supposed  it,  of  the  tea-service  with  which  she 
was  dealing  and  the  variously  tinted  appeal  of  certain 
savoury  edibles  on  plates.  "Oh  but  he  hadn't  had 
his  tea!"  he  heard  himself  the  next  moment  earnestly 
reply;  which  speech  had  at  once  betrayed,  he  was  then 
quickly  aware,  the  candour  of  his  interest,  the  unso 
phisticated  state  that  had  survived  so  many  troubles. 
If  he  was  so  interested  how  could  he  be  proud,  and  if 
he  was  proud  how  could  he  be  so  interested? 

He  had  made  her  at  any  rate  laugh  outright,  and 
was  further  conscious,  for  this,  both  that  it  was  the 
first  time  of  that  since  their  new  meeting,  and  that  it 
didn't  affect  him  as  harsh.  It  affected  him,  however, 
as  free,  for  she  replied  at  once,  still  smiling  and  as  a 
part  of  it:  "Oh,  I  think  we  shall  get  on!" 

This  told  him  he  had  made  some  difference  for  her, 
shown  her  the  way,  or  something  like  it,  that  she 
hadn't  been  sure  of  yesterday;  which  moreover  wasn't 
what  he  had  intended — he  had  come  armed  for  show 
ing  her  nothing;  so  that  after  she  had  gone  on  with  the 
same  gain  of  gaiety,  "You  must  at  any  rate  comfort 
ably  have  yours,"  there  was  but  one  answer  for  him  to 
make. 

His  eyes  played  again  over  the  tea-things — they 
seemed  strangely  to  help  him;  but  he  didn't  sit  down. 

281 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"I've  come,  as  you  see — but  I've  come,  please,  to 
understand;  and  if  you  require  to  be  alone  with  me, 
and  if  I  break  bread  with  you,  it  seems  to  me  I  should 
first  know  exactly  where  I  am  and  to  what  you  suppose 
I  so  commit  myself."  He  had  thought  it  out  and  over 
and  over,  particularly  the  turn  about  breaking  bread; 
though  perhaps  he  didn't  give  it,  in  her  presence — this 
was  impossible,  her  presence  altered  so  many  things — 
quite  the  full  sound  or  the  weight  he  had  planned. 

But  it  had  none  the  less  come  to  his  aid — it  had 
made  her  perfectly  grave.  "You  commit  yourself  to 
nothing.  You're  perfectly  free.  It's  only  I  who  com 
mit  myself." 

On  which,  while  she  stood  there  as  if  all  handsomely 
and  deferentially  waiting  for  him  to  consider  and  de 
cide,  he  would  have  been  naturally  moved  to  ask  her 
what  she  committed  herself  then  to — so  moved,  that  is, 
if  he  hadn't,  before  saying  it,  thought  more  sharply 
still  of  something  better.  "Oh,  that's  another  thing." 

"Yes,  that's  another  thing,"  Kate  Cookham  returned. 
To  which  she  added,  "So  now  won't  you  sit  down?" 
He  sank  with  deliberation  into  the  seat  from  which 
Captain  Roper  had  risen;  she  went  back  to  her  own 
and  while  she  did  so  spoke  again.  "I'm  not  free.  At 
least,"  she  said  over  her  tea-tray,  "I'm  free  only  for 
this." 

Everything  was  there  before  them  and  around  them, 
everything  massive  and  shining,  so  that  he  had  instinc 
tively  fallen  back  in  his  chair  as  for  the  wondering,  the 

282 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

resigned  acceptance  of  it;  where  her  last  words  stirred 
in  him  a  sense  of  odd  deprecation.  Only  for  "that"  ? 
"That"  was  everything,  at  this  moment,  to  his  long 
inanition,  and  the  effect,  as  if  she  had  suddenly  and 
perversely  mocked  him,  was  to  press  the  spring  of  a 
protest.  "Isn't  'this'  then  riches?" 

"Riches?"  she  smiled  over,  handing  him  his  cup — 
for  she  had  triumphed  in  having  struck  from  him  a 
question. 

"I  mean  haven't  you  a  lot  of  money?"  He  didn't 
care  now  that  it  was  out;  his  cup  was  in  his  hand,  and 
what  was  that  but  proved  interest  ?  He  had  suc 
cumbed  to  the  social  relation. 

"Yes,  I've  money.  Of  course  you  wonder — but 
I've  wanted  you  to  wonder.  It  was  to  make  you  take 
that  in  that  I  came.  So  now  you  know,"  she  said, 
leaning  back  where  she  faced  him,  but  in  a  straighter 
chair  and  with  her  arms  closely  folded,  after  a  fash 
ion  characteristic  of  her,  as  for  some  control  of  her 
nerves. 

"You  came  to  show  you've  money?" 

"That's  one  of  the  things.  Not  a  lot — not  even 
very  much.  But  enough,"  said  Kate  Cookham. 

"Enough?  I  should  think  so!"  he  again  couldn't 
help  a  bit  crudely  exhaling. 

"Enough  for  what  I  wanted.  I  don't  always  live 
like  this — not  at  all.  But  I  came  to  the  best  hotel  on 
purpose.  I  wanted  to  show  you  I  could.  Now,"  she 
asked,  "do  you  understand?" 

283 


THE  FINER   GRAIN 

" Understand?"     He  only  gaped. 

She  threw  up  her  loosed  arms,  which  dropped  again 
beside  her.  "I  did  it  for  you — I  did  It  for  you!" 

"'For' me ?" 

"What  I  did— what  I  did  here  of  old." 

He  stared,  trying  to  see  it.  "When  you  made  me 
pay  you?" 

"The  Two  Hundred  and  Seventy— all  I  could  get 
from  you,  as  you  reminded  me  yesterday,  so  that  I  had 
to  give  up  the  rest.  It  was  my  idea,"  she  went  on— 
"it  was  my  idea." 

"To  bleed  me  quite  to  death?"  Oh,  his  ice  was 
broken  now! 

"To  make  you  raise  money — since  you  could,  you 
could.  You  did,  you  did — so  what  better  proof?" 

His  hands  fell  from  what  he  had  touched;  he  could 
only  stare — her  own  manner  for  it  was  different  now 
too.  "I  did.  I  did  indeed—!"  And  the  woful  weak 
simplicity  of  it,  which  seemed  somehow  all  that  was 
left  him,  fell  even  on  his  own  ear. 

"Well  then,  here  it  is — it  isn't  lost!"  she  returned 
with  a  graver  face. 

"  'Here'  it  is,"  he  gasped,  "my  poor  agonised  old 
money — my  blood?" 

"Oh,  it's  my  blood  too,  you  must  know  now!"  She 
held  up  her  head  as  not  before — as  for  her  right  to 
speak  of  the  thing  to-day  most  precious  to  her.  "I 
took  it,  but  this — my  being  here  this  way — is  what  I've 
made  of  it!  That  was  the  idea  I  had!" 

284 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

Her  "ideas,"  as  things  to  boast  of,  staggered  him. 
"To  have  everything  in  the  world,  like  this,  at  my 
wretched  expense?" 

She  had  folded  her  arms  back  again — grasping  each 
elbow  she  sat  firm;  she  knew  he  could  see,  and  had 
known  well  from  the  first,  what  she  had  wanted  to  say, 
difficult,  monstrous  though  it  might  be.  "No  more 
than  at  my  own — but  to  do  something  with  your  money 
that  you'd  never  do  yourself." 

"Myself,  myself?"  he  wonderingly  wailed.  "Do 
you  know — or  don't  you? — what  my  life  has  been?" 

She  waited,  and  for  an  instant,  though  the  light 
in  the  room  had  failed  a  little  more  and  would  soon  be 
mainly  that  of  the  flaring  lamps  on  the  windy  Parade, 
he  caught  from  her  dark  eye  a  silver  gleam  of  impa 
tience.  "You've  suffered  and  you've  worked — which, 
God  knows,  is  what  I've  done!  Of  course  you've  suf 
fered,"  she  said — "you  inevitably  had  to!  We  have 
to,"  she  went  on,  "to  do  or  to  be  or  to  get  anything." 

"And  pray  what  have  I  done  or  been  or  got?" 
Herbert  Dodd  found  it  almost  desolately  natural  to 
demand. 

It  made  her  cover  him  again  as  with  all  she  was 
thinking  of.  "Can  you  imagine  nothing,  or  can't  you 
conceive —  ?"  And  then  as  her  challenge  struck  deeper 
in,  deeper  down  than  it  had  yet  reached,  and  with  the 
effect  of  a  rush  of  the  blood  to  his  face,  "It  was  for 
you,  it  was  for  you!"  she  again  broke  out — "and  for 
what  or  whom  else  could  it  have  been?" 

285 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

He  saw  things  to  a  tune  now  that  made  him  answer 
straight:  "I  thought  at  one  time  it  might  be  for  Bill 
Frankle." 

"Yes — that  was  the  way  you  treated  me,"  Miss 
Cookham  as  plainly  replied. 

But  he  let  this  pass;  his  thought  had  already  got 
away  from  it.  "What  good  then — its  having  been 
for  me — has  that  ever  done  me?" 

"Doesn't  it  do  you  any  good  now?"  his  friend  re 
turned.  To  which  she  added,  with  another  dim  play 
of  her  tormented  brightness,  before  he  could  speak: 
"But  if  you  won't  even  have  your  tea !" 

He  had  in  fact  touched  nothing  and,  if  he  could 
have  explained,  would  have  pleaded  very  veraciously 
that  his  appetite,  keen  when  he  came  in,  had  somehow 
suddenly  failed.  It  was  beyond  eating  or  drinking, 
what  she  seemed  to  want  him  to  take  from  her.  So  if 
he  looked,  before  him,  over  the  array,  it  was  to  say, 
very  grave  and  graceless:  "Am  I  to  understand  that 
you  offer  to  repay  me?" 

"I  offer  to  repay  you  with  interest,  Herbert  Dodd" 
— and  her  emphasis  of  the  great  word  was  wonderful. 

It  held  him  in  his  place  a  minute,  and  held  his  eyes 
upon  her;  after  which,  agitated  too  sharply  to  sit  still, 
he  pushed  back  his  chair  and  stood  up.  It  was  as  if 
mere  distress  or  dismay  at  first  worked  in  him,  and  was 
in  fact  a  wave  of  deep  and  irresistible  emotion  which 
made  him,  on  his  feet,  sway  as  in  a  great  trouble  and 
then,  to  correct  it,  throw  himself  stiffly  toward  the  win- 

286 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

dow,  where  he  stood  and  looked  out  unseeing.  The 
road,  the  wide  terrace  beyond,  the  seats,  the  eternal 
sea  beyond  that,  the  lighted  lamps  now  flaring  in  the 
October  night-wind,  with  the  few  dispersed  people 
abroad  at  the  tea-hour;  these  things,  meeting  and 
melting  into  the  firelit  hospitality  at  his  elbow — or  was 
it  that  portentous  amenity  that  melted  into  them? — 
seemed  to  form  round  him  and  to  put  before  him,  all 
together,  the  strangest  of  circles  and  the  newest  of 
experiences,  in  which  the  unforgettable  and  the  un 
imaginable  were  confoundingly  mixed.  " Oh,  oh,  oh!" 
— he  could  only  almost  howl  for  it. 

And  then,  while  a  thick  blur  for  some  moments 
mantled  everything,  he  knew  she  had  got  up,  that  she 
stood  watching  him,  allowing  for  everything,  again  all 
" cleverly"  patient  with  him,  and  he  heard  her  speak 
again  as  with  studied  quietness  and  clearness.  "I 
wanted  to  take  care  of  you — it  was  what  I  first  wanted 
— and  what  you  first  consented  to.  I'd  have  done  it, 
oh  I'd  have  done  it,  I'd  have  loved  you  and  helped  you 
and  guarded  you,  and  you'd  have  had  no  trouble,  no 
bad  blighting  ruin,  in  all  your  easy,  yes,  just  your  quite 
jolly  and  comfortable  life.  I  showed  you  and  proved 
to  you  this — I  brought  it  home  to  you,  as  I  fondly 
fancied,  and  it  made  me  briefly  happy.  You  swore 
you  cared  for  me,  you  wrote  it  and  made  me  believe  it 
— you  pledged  me  your  honour  and  your  faith.  Then 
you  turned  and  changed  suddenly  from  one  day  to 
another;  everything  altered,  you  broke  your  vows,  you 

287 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

as  good  as  told  me  you  only  wanted  it  off.-  You  faced 
me  with  dislike,  and  in  fact  tried  not  to  face  me  at  all; 
you  behaved  as  if  you  hated  me — you  had  seen  a  girl, 
of  great  beauty,  I  admit,  who  made  me  a  fright  and  a 
bore." 

This  brought  him  straight  round.  "No,  Kate  Cook- 
ham." 

"Yes,  Herbert  Dodd."  She  but  shook  her  head, 
calmly  and  nobly,  in  the  now  gathered  dusk,  and  her 
memories  and  her  cause  and  her  character — or  was  it 
only  her  arch-subtlety,  her  line  and  her  "idea"? — 
gave  her  an  extraordinary  large  assurance. 

She  had  touched,  however,  the  treasure  of  his  own 
case — his  terrible  own  case  that  began  to  live  again  at 
once  by  the  force  of  her  talking  of  hers,  and  which 
could  always  all  cluster  about  his  great  asseveration. 
"No,  no,  never,  never;  I  had  never  seen  her  then  and 
didn't  dream  of  her;  so  that  when  you  yourself  began 
to  be  harsh  and  sharp  with  me,  and  to  seem  to  want 
to  quarrel,  I  could  have  but  one  idea — which  was  an 
appearance  you  didn't  in  the  least,  as  I  saw  it  then, 
account  for  or  disprove." 

"An  appearance — ?"  Kate  desired,  as  with  high 
astonishment,  to  know  which  one. 

"How  shouldn't  I  have  supposed  you  really  to  care 
for  Bill  Frankle? — as  thoroughly  believing  the  motive 
of  your  claim  for  my  money  to  be  its  help  to  your  mar 
rying  him,  since  you  couldn't  marry  me.  I  was  only 
surprised  when,  time  passing,  I  made  out  that  that 

288 


THE  BENCH   OF  DESOLATION 

hadn't  happened;  and  perhaps,"  he  added  the  next 
instant  with  something  of  a  conscious  lapse  from  the 
finer  style,  "  hadn't  been  in  question." 

She  had  listened  to  this  only  staring,  and  she  was 
silent  after  he  had  said  it,  so  silent  for  some  instants 
that  while  he  considered  her  something  seemed  to  fail 
him,  much  as  if  he  had  thrown  out  his  foot  for  a  step 
and  not  found  the  place  to  rest  it.  He  jerked  round 
to  the  window  again,  and  then  she  answered,  but 
without  passion  unless  it  was  that  of  her  weariness  for 
something  stupid  and  forgiven  in  him,  "  Oh,  the  blind, 
the  pitiful  folly!" — to  which,  as  it  might  perfectly 
have  applied  to  her  own  behaviour,  he  returned  noth 
ing.  She  had  moreover  at  once  gone  on.  "Have  it 
then  that  there  wasn't  much  to  do — between  your 
finding  that  you  loathed  me  for  another  woman  or 
discovering  only,  when  it  came  to  the  point,  that  you 
loathed  me  quite  enough  for  myself." 

Which,  as  she  put  it  in  that  immensely  effective 
fashion,  he  recognised  that  he  must  just  unprotest- 
ingly  and  not  so  very  awkwardly — not  so  very! — take 
from  her;  since,  whatever  he  had  thus  come  to  her  for, 
it  wasn't  to  perjure  himself  with  any  pretence  that, 
"another  woman"  or  no  other  woman,  he  hadn't,  for 
years  and  years,  abhorred  her.  Now  he  was  taking 
tea  with  her — or  rather,  literally,  seemed  not  to  be; 
but  this  made  no  difference,  and  he  let  her  express  it 
as  she  would  while  he  distinguished  a  man  he  knew, 
Charley  Coote,  outside  on  the  Parade,  under  favour 

289 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

of  the  empty  hour  and  one  of  the  flaring  lamps,  making 
up  to  a  young  woman  with  whom  (it  stuck  out  gro 
tesquely  in  his  manner)  he  had  never  before  conversed. 
Dodd's  own  position  was  that  of  acquiescing  in  this 
recall  of  what  had  so  bitterly  been — but  he  hadn't 
come  back  to  her,  of  himself,  to  stir  up,  to  recall  or  to 
recriminate,  and  for  her  it  could  but  be  the  very  lesson 
of  her  whole  present  act  that  if  she  touched  anything 
she  touched  everything.  Soon  enough  she  was  indeed, 
and  all  overwhelmingly,  touching  everything — with  a 
hand  of  which  the  boldness  grew. 

"But  I  didn't  let  that,  even,  make  a  difference  in 
what  I  wanted — which  was  all,"  she  said,  "and  had 
only  and  passionately  been,  to  take  care  of  you.  I 
had  no  money  whatever — nothing  then  of  my  own,  not 
a  penny  to  come  by  anyhow;  so  it  wasn't  with  mine 
I  could  do  it.  But  I  could  do  it  with  yours,"  she 
amazingly  wound  up — "if  I  could  once  get  yours  out 
of  you." 

He  faced  straight  about  again — his  eyebrows  higher 
than  they  had  ever  been  in  his  life.  "Mine?  What 
penny  of  it  was  mine?  What  scrap  beyond  a  bare, 
mean  little  living  had  I  ever  pretended  to  have?" 

She  held  herself  still  a  minute,  visibly  with  force; 
only  her  eyes  consciously  attached  to  the  seat  of  a 
chair  the  back  of  which  her  hands,  making  it  tilt 
toward  her  a  little,  grasped  as  for  support.  "You 
pretended  to  have  enough  to  marry  me — and  that  was 
all  I  afterward  claimed  of  you  when  you  wouldn't." 

290 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

He  was  on  the  point  of  retorting  that  he  had  absolutely 
pretended  to  nothing — least  of  all  to  the  primary  desire 
that  such  a  way  of  stating  it  fastened  on  him;  he  was 
on  the  point  for  ten  seconds  of  giving  her  full  in  the 
face:  "I  never  had  any  such  dream  till  you  yourself — 
infatuated  with  me  as,  frankly,  you  on  the  whole  ap- 
•peared  to  be — got  round  me  and  muddled  me  up  and 
made  me  behave  as  if  in  a  way  that  went  against  the 
evidence  of  my  senses."  But  he  was  to  feel  as  quickly 
that,  whatever  the  ugly,  the  spent,  the  irrecoverable 
truth,  he  might  better  have  bitten  his  tongue  off:  there 
beat  on  him  there  this  strange  and  other,  this  so  pro 
digiously  different  beautiful  and  dreadful  truth  that  no 
far  remembrance  and  no  abiding  ache  of  his  own  could 
wholly  falsify,  and  that  was  indeed  all  out  with  her 
next  words.  "That — using  it  for  you  and  using  you 
yourself  for  your  own  future — was  my  motive.  I've 
led  my  life,  which  has  been  an  affair,  I  assure  you; 
and,  as  I've  told  you  without  your  quite  seeming  to  un 
derstand,  I've  brought  everything  fivefold  back  to  you." 

The  perspiration  broke  out  on  his  forehead.  ' '  Every 
thing's  mine?"  he  quavered  as  for  the  deep  piercing 
pain  of  it. 

"Everything!"  said  Kate  Cookham. 

So  it  told  him  how  she  had  loved  him — but  with  the 
tremendous  effect  at  once  of  its  only  glaring  out  at  him 
from  the  whole  thing  that  it  was  verily  she,  a  thousand 
times  over,  who,  in  the  exposure  of  his  youth  and  his 
vanity,  had,  on  the  bench  of  desolation,  the  scene  of 

291 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

yesterday's  own  renewal,  left  for  him  no  forward  steps 
to  take.  It  hung  there  for  him  tragically  vivid  again, 
the  hour  she  had  first  found  him  sequestered  and 
accessible  after  making  his  acquaintance  at  his  shop. 
And  from  this,  by  a  succession  of  links  that  fairly 
clicked  to  his  ear  as  with  their  perfect  fitting,  the  fate 
and  the  pain  and  the  payment  of  others  stood  together 
in  a  great  grim  order.  Everything  there  then  was 
his — to  make  him  ask  what  had  been  Nan's,  poor 
Nan's  of  the  constant  question  of  whether  he  need 
have  collapsed.  She  was  before  him,  she  was  between 
them,  his  little  dead  dissatisfied  wife;  across  all  whose 
final  woe  and  whose  lowly  grave  he  was  to  reach  out, 
it  appeared,  to  take  gifts.  He  saw  them  too,  the  gifts; 
saw  them — she  bristled  with  them — in  his  actual  com 
panion's  brave  and  sincere  and  authoritative  figure, 
her  strangest  of  demonstrations.  But  the  other  ap 
pearance  was  intenser,  as  if  their  ghost  had  waved  wild 
arms;  so  that  half  a  minute  hadn't  passed  before  the 
one  poor  thing  that  remained  of  Nan,  and  that  yet 
thus  became  a  quite  mighty  and  momentous  poor 
thing,  was  sitting  on  his  lips  as  for  its  sole  opportunity. 

"Can  you  give  me  your  word  of  honour  that  I 
mightn't,  under  decent  advice,  have  defied  you?" 

It  made  her  turn  very  white;  but  now  that  she  had 
said  what  she  had  said  she  could  still  hold  up  her  head. 
"Certainly  you  might  have  defied  me,  Herbert  Dodd." 

"They  would  have  told  me  you  had  no  legal  case?" 

Well,  if  she  was  pale  she  was  bold.  "You  talk  of 
292 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

decent  advice — !"  She  broke  off,  there  was  too  much 
to  say,  and  all  needless.  What  she  said  instead  was: 
"They  would  have  told  you  I  had  nothing." 

"I  didn't  so  much  as  ask,"  her  sad  visitor  remarked. 

"  Of  course  you  didn't  so  much  as  ask." 

"I  couldn't  be  so  outrageously  vulgar,"  he  went  on. 

"I  could,  by  God's  help!"  said  Kate  Cookham. 

•'Thank  you."  He  had  found  at  his  command  a 
tone  that  made  him  feel  more  gentlemanlike  than  he 
had  ever  felt  in  his  life  or  should  doubtless  ever  feel 
again.  It  might  have  been  enough — but  somehow  as 
they  stood  there  with  this  immense  clearance  between 
them  it  wasn't.  The  clearance  was  like  a  sudden  gap 
or  great  bleak  opening  through  which  there  blew  upon 
them  a  deadly  chill.  Too  many  things  had  fallen 
away,  too  many  new  rolled  up  and  over  him,  and  they 
made  something  within  shake  him  to  his  base.  It 
upset  the  full  vessel,  and  though  she  kept  her  eyes  on 
him  he  let  that  consequence  come,  bursting  into  tears, 
weakly  crying  there  before  her  even  as  he  had  cried  to 
himself  in  the  hour  of  his  youth  when  she  had  made 
him  groundlessly  fear.  She  turned  away  then — that 
she  couldn't  watch,  and  had  presently  flung  herself 
on  the  sofa  and,  all  responsively  wailing,  buried  her 
own  face  on  the  cushioned  arm.  So  for  a  minute  their 
smothered  sobs  only  filled  the  room.  But  he  made 
out,  through  this  disorder,  where  he  had  put  down  his 
hat;  his  stick  and  his  new  tan-coloured  gloves — they 
had  cost  two-and-thruppence  and  would  have  repre- 

293 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

sented  sacrifices — were  on  the  chair  beside  it.  He 
picked  these  articles  up  and  all  silently  and  softly — 
gasping,  that  is,  but  quite  on  tiptoe — reached  the  door 
and  let  himself  out. 


VI 


OFF  there  on  the  bench  of  desolation  a  week  later 
she  made  him  a  more  particular  statement,  which  it 
had  taken  the  remarkably  tense  interval  to  render  possi 
ble.  After  leaving  her  at  the  hotel  that  last  Sunday 
he  had  gone  forth  in  his  reaggravated  trouble  and 
walked  straight  before  him,  in  the  teeth  of  the  west 
wind,  close  to  the  iron  rails  of  the  stretched  Marina 
and  with  his  telltale  face  turned  from  persons  occa 
sionally  met,  and  toward  the  surging  sea.  At  the 
Land's  End,  even  in  the  confirmed  darkness  and  the 
perhaps  imminent  big  blow,  his  immemorial  nook, 
small  shelter  as  it  yielded,  had  again  received  him; 
and  it  was  in  the  course  of  this  heedless  session,  no 
doubt,  where  the  agitated  air  had  nothing  to  add  to 
the  commotion  within  him,  that  he  began  to  look  his 
extraordinary  fortune  a  bit  straighter  in  the  face  and 
see  it  confess  itself  at  once  a  fairy-tale  and  a  nightmare 
That,  visibly,  confoundingly,  she  was  still  attached  to 
him  (attached  in  fact  was  a  mild  word!)  and  that  the 
unquestionable  proof  of  it  was  in  this  offered  pecuni 
ary  salve,  of  the  thickest  composition,  for  his  wounds 
and  sores  and  shames — these  things  were  the  fantastic 

294 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

fable,  the  tale  of  money  in  handfuls,  that  he  seemed  to 
have  only  to  stand  there  and  swallow  and  digest  and 
feel  himself  full-fed  by;  but  the  whole  of  the  rest  was 
nightmare,  and  most  of  all  nightmare  his  having  thus 
to  thank  one  through  whom  Nan  and  his  little  girls 
had  known  torture. 

He  didn't  care  for  himself  now,  and  this  unextin- 
guished  and  apparently  inextinguishable  charm  by 
which  he  had  held  her  was  a  fact  incredibly  romantic; 
but  he  gazed  with  a  longer  face  than  he  had  ever  had 
for  anything  in  the  world  at  his  potential  acceptance 
of  a  great  bouncing  benefit  from  the  person  he  inti 
mately,  if  even  in  a  manner  indirectly,  associated  with 
the  conditions  to  which  his  lovely  wife  and  his  chil 
dren  (who  would  have  been  so  lovely  too)  had  piti 
fully  succumbed.  He  had  accepted  the  social  relation 
—which  meant  he  had  taken  even  that  on  trial — with 
out  knowing  what  it  so  dazzlingly  masked;  for  a  social 
relation  it  had  become  with  a  vengeance  when  it  drove 
him  about  the  place  as  now  at  his  hours  of  freedom 
(and  he  actually  and  recklessly  took,  all  demoralised 
and  unstrung  and  unfit  either  for  work  or  for  anything 
else,  other  liberties  that  would  get  him  into  trouble) 
under  this  queer  torment  of  irreconcilable  things,  a 
bewildered  consciousness  of  tenderness  and  patience 
and  cruelty,  of  great  evident  mystifying  facts  that  were 
as  little  to  be  questioned  as  to  be  conceived  or  ex 
plained,  and  that  were  yet  least,  withal,  to  be  lost 
sight  of. 

295 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

On  that  Sunday  night  he  had  wandered  wild,  inco 
herently  ranging  and  throbbing,  but  this  became  the 
law  of  his  next  days  as  well,  since  he  lacked  more  than 
ever  all  other  resort  or  refuge  and  had  nowhere  to 
carry,  to  deposit,  or  contractedly  let  loose  and  lock  up, 
as  it  were,  his  swollen  consciousness,  which  fairly  split 
in  twain  the  raw  shell  of  his  sordid  little  boarding- 
place.  The  arch  of  the  sky  and  the  spread  of  sea  and 
shore  alone  gave  him  space;  he  could  roam  with  him 
self  anywhere,  in  short,  far  or  near — he  could  only 
never  take  himself  back.  That  certitude — that  this 
was  impossible  to  him  even  should  she  wait  there 
among  her  plushes  and  bronzes  ten  years — was  the 
thing  he  kept  closest  clutch  of;  it  did  wonders  for  what 
he  would  have  called  his  self-respect.  Exactly  as  he 
had  left  her  so  he  would  stand  off — even  though  at 
moments  when  he  pulled  up  sharp  somewhere  to  put 
himself  an  intensest  question  his  heart  almost  stood 
still.  The  days  of  the  week  went  by,  and  as  he  had 
left  her  she  stayed;  to  the  extent,  that  is,  of  his  having 
neither  sight  nor  sound  of  her,  and  of  the  failure  of 
every  sign.  It  took  nerve,  he  said,  not  to  return  to 
her,  even  for  curiosity — since  how,  after  all,  in  the 
name  of  wonder,  had  she  invested  the  fruits  of  her 
extortion  to  such  advantage,  there  being  no  chapter 
of  all  the  obscurity  of  the  years  to  beat  that  for  queer- 
ness  ?  But  he  dropped,  tired  to  death,  on  benches,  half 
a  dozen  times  an  evening — exactly  on  purpose  to  recog 
nise  that  the  nerve  required  was  just  the  nerve  he  had. 

296 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

As  the  days  without  a  token  from  her  multiplied  he 
came  in  as  well  for  hours — and  these  indeed  mainly  on 
the  bench  of  desolation — of  sitting  stiff  and  stark  in 
presence  of  the  probability  that  he  had  lost  everything 
for  ever.  When  he  passed  the  Royal  he  never  turned 
an  eyelash,  and  when  he  met  Captain  Roper  on  the 
Front,  three  days  after  having  been  introduced  to  him, 
he  "cut  him  dead" — another  privileged  consequence 
of  a  social  relation — rather  than  seem  to  himself  to 
make  the  remotest  approach  to  the  question  of  whether 
Miss  Cookham  had  left  Properley.  He  had  cut  peo 
ple  in  the  days  of  his  life  before,  just  as  he  had  come 
to  being  himself  cut — since  there  had  been  no  time  for 
him  wholly  without  one  or  other  face  of  that  necessity 
— but  had  never  effected  such  a  severance  as  of  this 
rare  connection,  which  helped  to  give  him  thus  the 
measure  of  his  really  precious  sincerity.  If  he  had 
lost  what  had  hovered  before  him  he  had  lost  it,  his 
only  tribute  to  which  proposition  was  to  grind  his 
teeth  with  one  of  those  "scrunches,"  as  he  would  have 
said,  of  which  the  violence  fairly  reached  his  ear.  It 
wouldn't  make  him  lift  a  finger,  and  in  fact  if  Kate 
had  simply  taken  herself  off  on  the  Tuesday  or  the 
Wednesday  she  would  have  been  reabsorbed  again  into 
the  darkness  from  which  she  had  emerged — and  no 
lifting  of  fingers,  the  unspeakable  chapter  closed,  would 
evermore  avail.  That  at  any  rate  was  the  kind  of 
man  he  still  was — even  after  all  that  had  come  and 
gone,  and  even  if  for  a  few  dazed  hours  certain  things 

297 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

had  seemed  pleasant.  The  dazed  hours  had  passed, 
the  surge  of  the  old  bitterness  had  dished  him  (shouldn't 
he  have  been  shamed  if  it  hadn't?),  and  he  might  sit 
there  as  before,  as  always,  with  nothing  at  all  on  earth 
to  look  to.  He  had  therefore  wrongfully  believed  him 
self  to  be  degraded ;  and  the  last  word  about  him  would 
be  that  he  couldn't  then,  it  appeared,  sink  to  vulgarity 
as  he  had  tried  to  let  his  miseries  make  him. 

And  yet  on  the  next  Sunday  morning,  face  to  face 
with  him  again  at  the  Land's  End,  what  she  very  soon 
came  to  was:  "As  if  I  believed  you  didn't  know  by 
what  cord  you  hold  me!"  Absolutely  too,  and  just 
that  morning  in  fact,  above  all,  he  wouldn't,  he  quite 
couldn't  have  taken  his  solemn  oath  that  he  hadn't  a 
sneaking  remnant,  as  he  might  have  put  it  to  himself 
— a  remnant  of  faith  in  tremendous  things  still  to  come 
of  their  interview.  The  day  was  sunny  and  breezy, 
the  sea  of  a  cold  purple;  he  wouldn't  go  to  church  as 
he  mostly  went  of  Sunday  mornings,  that  being  in 
its  way  too  a  social  relation — and  not  least  when  two- 
and-thruppenny  tan-coloured  gloves  were  new;  which 
indeed  he  had  the  art  of  keeping  them  for  ages.  Yet 
he  would  dress  himself  as  he  scarce  mustered  resources 
for  even  to  figure  on  the  fringe  of  Society,  local  and 
transient,  at  St.  Bernard's,  and  in  this  trim  he  took 
his  way  westward;  occupied  largely,  as  he  went,  it 
might  have  seemed  to  any  person  pursuing  the  same 
course  and  happening  to  observe  him,  in  a  fascinated 
study  of  the  motions  of  his  shadow,  the  more  or  less 

298 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

grotesque  shape  projected,  in  front  of  him  and  mostly 
a  bit  to  the  right,  over  the  blanched  asphalt  of  the 
Parade  and  dandling  and  dancing  at  such  a  rate, 
shooting  out  and  then  contracting,  that,  viewed  in 
themselves,  its  eccentricities  might  have  formed  the 
basis  of  an  interesting  challenge:  "Find  the  state  of 
mind,  guess  the  nature  of  the  agitation,  possessing  the 
person  so  remarkably  represented!"  Herbert  Dodd, 
for  that  matter,  might  have  been  himself  attempting  to 
make  by  the  sun's  sharp  aid  some  approach  to  his 
immediate  horoscope. 

It  had  at  any  rate  been  thus  put  before  him  that  the 
dandling  and  dancing  of  his  image  occasionally  gave 
way  to  perfect  immobility,  when  he  stopped  and  kept 
his  eyes  on  it.  "Suppose  she  should  come,  suppose 
she  should!"  it  is  revealed  at  least  to  ourselves  that  he 
had  at  these  moments  audibly  breathed — breathed  with 
the  intensity  of  an  arrest  between  hope  and  fear.  It 
had  glimmered  upon  him  from  early,  with  the  look  of 
the  day,  that,  given  all  else  that  could  happen,  this 
would  be  rather,  as  he  put  it,  in  her  line;  and  the 
possibility  lived  for  him,  as  he  proceeded,  to  the  tune 
of  a  suspense  almost  sickening.  It  was,  from  one 
small  stage  of  his  pilgrimage  to  another,  the  "For  ever, 
never!"  of  the  sentimental  case  the  playmates  of  his 
youth  used  to  pretend  to  settle  by  plucking  the  petals 
of  a  daisy.  But  it  came  to  his  truly  turning  faint — so 
"queer"  he  felt — when,  at  the  gained  point  of  the  long 
stretch  from  which  he  could  always  tell,  he  arrived 

299 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

within  positive  sight  of  his  immemorial  goal.  His 
seat  was  taken  and  she  was  keeping  it  for  him — it 
could  only  be  she  there  in  possession;  whereby  it  shone 
out  for  Herbert  Dodd  that  if  he  hadn't  been  quite  sure 
of  her  recurrence  she  had  at  least  been  quite  sure  of 
his.  That  pulled  him  up  to  some  purpose,  where 
recognition  began  for  them — or  to  the  effect,  in  other 
words,  of  his  pausing  to  judge  if  he  could  bear,  for 
the  sharpest  note  of  their  intercourse,  this  inveterate 
demonstration  of  her  making  him  do  what  she  liked. 
What  settled  the  question  for  him  then — and  just  while 
they  avowedly  watched  each  other,  over  the  long  inter 
val,  before  closing,  as  if,  on  either  side,  for  the  major 
advantage — what  settled  it  was  this  very  fact  that  what 
she  liked  she  liked  so  terribly.  If  it  were  simply  to 
"use"  him,  as  she  had  said  the  last  time,  and  no  mat 
ter  to  the  profit  of  which  of  them  she  called  it,  one 
might  let  it  go  for  that;  since  it  could  make  her  wait 
over,  day  after  day,  in  that  fashion,  and  with  such  a 
spending  of  money,  on  the  hazard  of  their  meeting 
again.  How  could  she  be  the  least  sure  he  would 
ever  again  consent  to  it  after  the  proved  action  on  him, 
a  week  ago,  of  her  last  monstrous  honesty?  It  was 
indeed  positively  as  if  he  were  now  himself  putting 
this  influence — and  for  their  common  edification — to 
the  supreme,  to  the  finest  test.  He  had  a  sublime,  an 
ideal  flight,  which  lasted  about  a  minute.  "  Suppose, 
now  that  I  see  her  there  and  what  she  has  taken  so 
characteristically  for  granted,  suppose  I  just  show  her 

300 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

that  she  hasn't  only  confidently  to  wait  or  whistle  for 
me,  and  that  the  length  of  my  leash  is  greater  than 
she  measures,  and  that  everything's  impossible  always? 
— show  it  by  turning  my  back  on  her  now  and  walking 
straight  away.  She  won't  be  able  not  to  understand 
that!" 

Nothing  had  passed,  across  their  distance,  but  the 
mute  apprehension  of  each  on  the  part  of  each;  the 
whole  expanse,  at  the  church  hour,  was  void  of  other 
life  (he  had  scarce  met  a  creature  on  his  way  from  end 
to  end),  and  the  sun-seasoned  gusts  kept  brushing  the 
air  and  all  the  larger  prospect  clean.  It  was  through 
this  beautiful  lucidity  that  he  watched  her  watch  him, 
as  it  were — watch  him  for  what  he  would  do.  Neither 
moved  at  this  high  tension;  Kate  Cookham,  her  face 
fixed  on  him,  only  waited  with  a  stiff  appearance  of 
leaving  him,  not  for  dignity  but — to  an  effect  of  even 
deeper  perversity — for  kindness,  free  to  choose.  It  yet 
somehow  affected  him  at  present,  this  attitude,  as  a 
gage  of  her  knowing  too — knowing,  that  is,  that  he 
wasn't  really  free,  that  this  was  the  thinnest  of  vain 
parades,  the  poorest  of  hollow  heroics,  that  his  need, 
his  solitude,  his  suffered  wrong,  his  exhausted  rancour, 
his  foredoomed  submission  to  any  shown  interest,  all 
hung  together  too  heavy  on  him  to  let  the  weak  wings 
of  his  pride  do  more  than  vaguely  tremble.  They 
couldn't,  they  didn't  carry  him  a  single  beat  further 
away;  according  to  which  he  stood  rooted,  neither 
retreating  nor  advancing,  but  presently  correcting  his 

301 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

own  share  of  the  bleak  exchange  by  looking  off  at 
the  sea.  Deeply  conscious  of  the  awkwardness  this 
posture  gave  him,  he  yet  clung  to  it  as  the  last  shred  of 
his  honour,  to  the  clear  argument  that  it  was  one  thing 
for  him  to  have  felt  beneath  all  others,  the  previous 
days,  that  she  was  to  be  counted  on,  but  quite  a  differ 
ent  for  her  to  have  felt  that  he  was.  His  checked 
approach,  arriving  thus  at  no  term,  could  in  these  odd 
conditions  have  established  that  he  wasn't  only  if  Kate 
Cookham  had,  as  either  of  them  might  have  said, 
taken  it  so — if  she  had  given  up  the  game  at  last  by 
rising,  by  walking  away  and  adding  to  the  distance 
between  them,  and  he  had  then  definitely  let  her  van 
ish  into  space.  It  became  a  fact  that  when  she  did 
finally  rise — though  after  how  long  our  record  scarce 
takes  on  itself  to  say — it  was  not  to  confirm  their  sepa 
ration  but  to  put  an  end  to  it;  and  this  by  slowly  ap 
proaching  him  till  she  had  come  within  earshot.  He 
had  wondered,  once  aware  of  it  in  spite  of  his  averted 
face,  what  she  would  say  and  on  what  note,  as  it  were, 
she  would  break  their  week's  silence;  so  that  he  had 
to  recognise  anew,  her  voice  reaching  him,  that  re 
markable  quality  in  her  which  again  and  again  came 
up  for  him  as  her  art. 

"There  are  twelve  hundred  and  sixty  pounds,  to  be 
definite,  but  I  have  it  all  down  for  you — and  you've 
only  to  draw." 

They  lost  themselves,  these  words,  rare  and  exqui 
site,  in  the  wide  bright  genial  medium  and  the  Sunday 

302 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

stillness,  but  even  while  that  occurred  and  he  was  gap 
ing  for  it  she  was  herself  there,  in  her  battered  ladylike 
truth,  to  answer  for  them,  to  represent  them,  and,  if  a 
further  grace  than  their  simple  syllabled  beauty  were 
conceivable,  almost  embarrassingly  to  cause  them  to 
materialise.  Yes,  she  let  her  smart  and  tight  little 
reticule  hang  as  if  it  bulged,  beneath  its  clasp,  with 
the  whole  portentous  sum,  and  he  felt  himself  glare 
again  at  this  vividest  of  her  attested  claims.  She 
might  have  been  ready,  on  the  spot,  to  open  the  store 
to  the  plunge  of  his  hand,  or,  with  the  situation  other 
wise  conceived,  to  impose  on  his  pauperised  state  an 
acceptance  of  alms  on  a  scale  unprecedented  in  the 
annals  of  street  charity.  Nothing  so  much  counted 
for  him,  however,  neither  grave  numeral  nor  elegant 
fraction,  as  the  short,  rich,  rounded  word  that  the 
breeze  had  picked  up  as  it  dropped  and  seemed  now  to 
blow  about  between  them.  "To  draw — to  draw?" 
Yes,  he  gaped  it  as  if  it  had  no  sense;  the  fact  being 
that  even  while  he  did  so  he  was  reading  into  her  use 
of  the  term  more  romance  than  any  word  in  the  lan 
guage  had  ever  had  for  him.  He,  Herbert  Dodd,  was 
to  live  to  "draw,"  like  people,  scarce  hampered  by  the 
conditions  of  earth,  whom  he  had  remotely  and  cir- 
cuitously  heard  about,  and  in  fact  when  he  walked 
back  with  her  to  where  she  had  been  sitting  it  was 
very  much,  for  his  strained  nerves,  as  if  the  very  bench 
of  desolation  itself  were  to  be  the  scene  of  that  exploit 
and  he  mightn't  really  live  till  he  reached  it. 

303 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

When  they  had  sat  down  together  she  did  press  the 
spring  of  her  reticule,  from  which  she  took,  not  a 
handful  of  gold  nor  a  packet  of  crisp  notes,  but  an 
oblong  sealed  letter,  which  she  had  thus  waited  on 
him,  she  remarked,  on  purpose  to  deliver,  and  which 
would  certify,  with  sundry  particulars,  to  the  credit 
she  had  opened  for  him  at  a  London  bank.  He  re 
ceived  it  without  looking  at  it — he  held  it,  in  the 
same  manner,  conspicuous  and  unassimilated,  for  most 
of  the  rest  of  the  immediate  time,  appearing  embar 
rassed  with  it,  nervously  twisting  and  flapping  it,  yet 
thus  publicly  retaining  it  even  while  aware,  beneath 
everything,  of  the  strange,  the  quite  dreadful,  wouldn't 
it  be?  engagement  that  such  inaction  practically  stood 
for.  He  could  accept  money  to  that  amount,  yes — 
but  not  for  nothing  in  return.  For  what  then  in 
return?  He  kept  asking  himself  for  what,  while  she 
said  other  things  and  made  above  all,  in  her  high, 
shrewd,  successful  way  the  point  that,  no,  he  needn't 
pretend  that  his  conviction  of  her  continued  personal 
interest  in  him  wouldn't  have  tided  him  over  any  ques 
tion  besetting  him  since  their  separation.  She  put  it 
to  him  that  the  deep  instinct  of  where  he  should  at  last 
find  her  must  confidently  have  worked  for  him,  since 
she  confessed  to  her  instinct  of  where  she  should  find 
him;  which  meant — oh  it  came  home  to  him  as  he 
fingered  his  sealed  treasure! — neither  more  nor  less 
than  that  she  had  now  created  between  them  an  equal 
ity  of  experience.  He  wasn't  to  have  done  all  the 

304 


THE   BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

suffering,  she  was  to  have  "been  through"  things  he 
couldn't  even  guess  at;  and,  since  he  was  bargaining 
away  his  right  ever  again  to  allude  to  the  unforget 
table,  so  much  there  was  of  it,  what  her  tacit  proposi 
tion  came  to  was  that  they  were  "square"  and  might 
start  afresh. 

He  didn't  take  up  her  charge,  as  his  so  compromised 
"pride"  yet  in  a  manner  prompted  him,  that  he  had 
enjoyed  all  the  week  all  those  elements  of  ease  about 
her;  the  most  he  achieved  for  that  was  to  declare,  with 
an  ingenuity  contributing  to  float  him  no  small  dis 
tance  further,  that  of  course  he  had  turned  up  at  their 
old  place  of  tryst,  which  had  been,  through  the  years, 
the  haunt  of  his  solitude  and  the  goal  of  his  walk  any 
Sunday  morning  that  seemed  too  beautiful  for  church; 
but  that  he  hadn't  in  the  least  built  on  her  presence 
there — since  that  supposition  gave  him,  she  would 
understand,  wouldn't  she?  the  air,  disagreeable  to  him, 
of  having  come  in  search  of  her.  Her  quest  of  himself, 
once  he  had  been  seated  there,  would  have  been  an 
other  matter — but  in  short  "Of  course  after  all  you 
did  come  to  me,  just  now,  didn't  you?"  He  felt  him 
self,  too,  lamely  and  gracelessly  grin,  as  for  the  final 
kick  of  his  honour,  in  confirmation  of  the  record  that 
he  had  then  yielded  but  to  her  humility.  Her  humility 
became  for  him  at  this  hour  and  to  this  tune,  on  the 
bench  of  desolation,  a  quantity  more  prodigious  and 
even  more  mysterious  than  that  other  guaranteed  quan 
tity  the  finger-tips  of  his  left  hand  could  feel  the  tap  of 

305 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

by  the  action  of  his  right;  though  what  was  in  especial 
extraordinary  was  the  manner  in  which  she  could  keep 
making  him  such  allowances  and  yet  meet  him  again, 
at  some  turn,  as  with  her  residuum  for  her  clever  self 
so  great. 

"Come  to  you,  Herbert  Dodd?"  she  imperturbably 
echoed.  "I've  been  coming  to  you  for  the  last  ten 
years!" 

There  had  been  for  him  just  before  this  sixty  supreme 
seconds  of  intensest  aspiration — a  minute  of  his  keep 
ing  his  certificate  poised  for  a  sharp  thrust  back  at  her, 
the  thrust  of  the  wild  freedom  of  his  saying:  "No,  no, 
I  can't  give  them  up;  I  can't  simply  sink  them  deep 
down  in  my  soul  forever,  with  no  cross  in  all  my  future 
to  mark  that  burial;  so  that  if  this  is  what  our  arrange 
ment  means  I  must  decline  to  have  anything  to  do 
with  it."  The  words  none  the  less  hadn't  come,  and 
when  she  had  herself,  a  couple  of  minutes  later,  spoken 
those  others,  the  blood  rose  to  his  face  as  if,  given  his 
stiffness  and  her  extravagance,  he  had  just  indeed 
saved  himself. 

Everything  in  fact  stopped,  even  his  fidget  with  his 
paper;  she  imposed  a  hush,  she  imposed  at  any  rate 
the  conscious  decent  form  of  one,  and  he  couldn't 
afterward  have  told  how  long,  at  this  juncture,  he  must 
have  sat  simply  gazing  before  him.  It  was  so  long,  at 
any  rate,  that  Kate  herself  got  up — and  quite  indeed, 
presently,  as  if  her  own  forms  were  now  at  an  end. 
He  had  returned  her  nothing — so  what  was  she  waiting 

306 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

for?  She  had  been  on  the  two  other  occasions  mo 
mentarily  at  a  loss,  but  never  so  much  so,  no  doubt, 
as  was  thus  testified  to  by  her  leaving  the  bench  and 
moving  over  once  more  to  the  rail  of  the  terrace.  She 
could  carry  it  off,  in  a  manner,  with  her  resources, 
that  she  was  waiting  with  so  little  to  wait  for;  she  could 
face  him  again,  after  looking  off  at  the  sea,  as  if  this 
slightly  stiff  delay,  not  wholly  exempt  from  awkward 
ness,  had  been  but  a  fine  scruple  of  her  courtesy.  She 
had  gathered  herself  in;  after  giving  him  time  to  appeal 
she  could  take  it  that  he  had  decided  and  that  nothing 
was  left  for  her  to  do.  "Well  then,"  she  clearly 
launched  at  him  across  the  broad  walk — "well  then, 
good-bye." 

She  had  come  nearer  with  it,  as  if  he  might  rise  for 
some  show  of  express  separation;  but  he  only  leaned 
back  motionless,  his  eyes  on  her  now — he  kept  her  a 
moment  before  him.  "Do  you  mean  that  we  don't 
— that  we  don't — ?"  But  he  broke  down. 

"Do  I  'mean' — ?"  She  remained  as  for  questions 
he  might  ask,  but  it  was  wellnigh  as  if  there  played 
through  her  dotty  veil  an  irrepressible  irony  for  that 
particular  one.  "I've  meant,  for  long  years,  I  think, 
all  I'm  capable  of  meaning.  I've  meant  so  much  that 
I  can't  mean  more.  So  there  it  is." 

"But  if  you  go/'  he  appealed — and  with  a  sense  as 
of  final  flatness,  however  he  arranged  it,  for  his  own 
attitude — "but  if  you  go  sha'n't  I  see  you  again?" 

She  waited  a  little,  and  it  was  strangely  for  him  now 
307 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

as  if — though  at  last  so  much  more  gorged  with  her 
tribute  than  she  had  ever  been  with  his — something 
still  depended  on  her.  "Do  you  like  to  see  me?"  she 
very  simply  asked. 

At  this  he  did  get  up;  that  was  easier  than  to  say — 
at  least  with  responsive  simplicity;  and  again  for  a 
little  he  looked  hard  and  in  silence  at  his  letter;  which 
at  last,  however,  raising  his  eyes  to  her  own  for  the  act, 
while  he  masked  their  conscious  ruefulness,  to  his 
utmost,  in  some  air  of  assurance,  he  slipped  into  the 
inner  pocket  of  his  coat,  letting  it  settle  there  securely. 
"You're  too  wonderful."  But  he  frowned  at  her  with 
it  as  never  in  his  life.  "Where  does  it  all  come  from?" 

"The  wonder  of  poor  me?"  Kate  Cookham  said. 
"It  comes  from  you" 

He  shook  his  head  slowly — feeling,  with  his  letter 
there  against  his  heart,  such  a  new  agility,  almost  such 
a  new  range  of  interest.  "I  mean  so  much  money — 
so  extraordinarily  much." 

Well,  she  held  him  a  while  blank.  "  Does  it  seem  to 
you  extraordinarily  much — twelve-hundred-and-sixty  ? 
Because,  you  know,"  she  added,  "it's  all." 

"It's  enough!"  he  returned  with  a  slight  thoughtful 
droop  of  his  head  to  the  right  and  his  eyes  attached  to 
the  far  horizon  as  through  a  shade  of  shyness  for  what 
he  was  saying.  He  felt  all  her  own  lingering  nearness 
somehow  on  his  cheek. 

"It's  enough?  Thank  you  then!"  she  rather  oddly 
went  on. 

308 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

He  shifted  a  little  his  posture.  "It  was  more  than 
a  hundred  a  year — for  you  to  get  together." 

"Yes,"  she  assented,  "that  was  what  year  by  year 
I  tried  for." 

"But  that  you  could  live  all  the  while  and  save 
that — !"  Yes,  he  was  at  liberty,  as  he  hadn't  been, 
quite  pleasantly  to  marvel.  All  his  wonderments  in 
life  had  been  hitherto  unanswered — and  didn't  the 
change  mean  that  here  again  was  the  social  rela 
tion? 

"Ah,  I  didn't  live  as  you  saw  me  the  other  day." 

"Yes,"  he  answered — and  didn't  he  the  next  instant 
feel  he  must  fairly  have  smiled  with  it? — "the  other 
day  you  were  going  it!" 

"For  once  in  my  life,"  said  Kate  Cookham.  "I've 
left  the  hotel,"  she  after  a  moment  added. 

"Ah,  you're  in — a — lodgings?"  he  found  himself 
inquiring  as  for  positive  sociability. 

She  had  apparently  a  slight  shade  of  hesitation,  but 
in  an  instant  it  was  all  right;  as  what  he  showed  he 
wanted  to  know  she  seemed  mostly  to  give  him.  "Yes 
— but  far  of  course  from  here.  Up  on  the  hill."  To 
which,  after  another  instant,  "At  The  Mount,  Castle 
Terrace,"  she  subjoined. 

"Oh,  I  know  The  Mount.  And  Castle  Terrace  is 
awfully  sunny  and  nice." 

"Awfully  sunny  and  nice,"  Kate  Cookham  took 
from  him. 

"So  that  if  it  isn't,"  he  pursued,  "like  the  Royal, 
why  you're  at  least  comfortable." 

309 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

"I  shall  be  comfortable  anywhere  now,"  she  replied 
with  a  certain  dryness. 

It  was  astonishing,  however,  what  had  become  of 
his  own.  "  Because  I've  accepted ?" 

"Call  it  that!"  she  dimly  smiled. 

"I  hope  then  at  any  rate,"  he  returned,  "you  can 
now  thoroughly  rest."  He  spoke  as  for  a  cheerful 
conclusion  and  moved  again  also  to  smile,  though  as 
with  a  poor  grimace,  no  doubt;  since  what  he  seemed 
most  clearly  to  feel  was  that  since  he  " accepted"  he 
mustn't,  for  his  last  note,  have  accepted  in  sulkiness 
or  gloom.  With  that,  at  the  same  time,  he  couldn't 
but  know,  in  all  his  fibres,  that  with  such  a  still-watch 
ing  face  as  the  dotty  veil  didn't  disguise  for  him  there 
was  no  possible  concluding,  at  least  on  his  part.  On 
hers,  on  hers  it  was — as  he  had  so  often  for  a  week 
had  reflectively  to  pronounce  things — another  affair. 
Ah,  somehow,  both  formidably  and  helpfully,  her  face 
concluded — yet  in  a  sense  so  strangely  enshrouded  in 
things  she  didn't  tell  him.  What  must  she,  what 
mustn't  she,  have  done?  What  she  had  said — and 
she  had  really  told  him  nothing — was  no  account  of 
her  life;  in  the  midst  of  which  conflict  of  opposed  recog 
nitions,  at  any  rate,  it  was  as  if,  for  all  he  could  do,  he 
himself  now  considerably  floundered.  "But  I  can't 
think— I  can't  think !" 

"You  can't  think  I  can  have  made  so  much  money 
in  the  time  and  been  honest?" 

"Oh,  you've  been  honest!"  Herbert  Dodd  distinctly 
allowed. 

310 


THE  BENCH  OF  DESOLATION 

It  moved  her  stillness  to  a  gesture — which,  however, 
she  had  as  promptly  checked ;  and  she  went  on  the  next 
instant  as  for  further  generosity  to  his  failure  of  thought. 
"Everything  was  possible,  under  my  stress,  with  my 
hatred." 

"Your  hatred — ?"  For  she  had  paused  as  if  it 
were  after  all  too  difficult. 

"Of  what  I  should  for  so  long  have  been  doing  to 
you." 

With  this,  for  all  his  failures,  a  greater  light  than 
any  yet  shone  upon  him.  "It  made  you  think  of 
ways ?" 

"It  made  me  think  of  everything.  It  made  me 
work,"  said  Kate  Cookham.  She  added,  however,  the 
next  moment:  "But  that's  my  story." 

"And  I  mayn't  hear  it?" 

"No — because  I  mayn't  hear  yours." 

"Oh,  mine — !"  he  said  with  the  strangest,  saddest, 
yet  after  all  most  resigned  sense  of  surrender  of  it; 
which  he  tried  to  make  sound  as  if  he  couldn't  have 
told  it,  for  its  splendor  of  sacrifice  and  of  misery,  even 
if  he  would. 

It  seemed  to  move  in  her  a  little,  exactly,  that  sense 
of  the  invidious.  "Ah,  mine  too,  I  assure  you !" 

He  rallied  at  once  to  the  interest.  "Oh,  we  can 
talk 'then?" 

"Never,"  she  all  oddly  replied.  "Never,"  said 
Kate  Cookham. 

They  remained  so,  face  to  face;  the  effect  of  which 


THE  FINER  GRAIN 

for  him  was  that  he  had  after  a  little  understood  why. 
That  was  fundamental.  "Well,  I  see." 

Thus  confronted  they  stayed;  and  then,  as  he  saw 
with  a  contentment  that  came  up  from  deeper  still,  it 
was  indeed  she  who,  with  her  worn  fine  face,  would 
conclude.  "But  I  can  take  care  of  you." 

"You  have!"  he  said  as  with  nothing  left  of  him 
but  a  beautiful  appreciative  candour. 

"Oh,  but  you'll  want  it  now  in  a  way — !"  she 
responsibly  answered. 

He  waited  a  moment,  dropping  again  on  the  seat. 
So,  while  she  still  stood,  he  looked  up  at  her;  with  the 
sense  somehow  that  there  were  too  many  things  and 
that  they  were  all  together,  terribly,  irresistibly,  doubt 
less  blessedly,  in  her  eyes  and  her  whole  person;  which 
thus  affected  him  for  the  moment  as  more  than  he 
could  bear.  He  leaned  forward,  dropping  his  elbows 
to  his  knees  and  pressing  his  head  on  his  hands.  So 
he  stayed,  saying  nothing;  only,  with  the  sense  of  her 
own  sustained,  renewed  and  wonderful  action,  knowing 
that  an  arm  had  passed  round  him  and  that  he  was 
held.  She  was  beside  him  on  the  bench  of  desolation. 


312 


14  DAY  USE 

RETURN  TO  DESK  FROM  WHICH  BORROWED 

LOAN  DEPT. 

This  book  is  due  on  the  last  date  stamped  below, 
or  on  the  date  to  which  renewed.  Renewals  only: 

Tel.  No.  642-3405 

Renewals  may  be  made  4  days  prior  to  date  due. 
Renewed  books  are  subject  to  immediate  recall. 


— 


PT  R     1Q7? 


LD2JA-10m-8,'73 
(R1902S10)476 — A-31 


General  Library 

University  of  California 

Berkeley 


X 


I 


